A Baylor study finds that college women who are sexual assault victims can find healing in religious groups where strong theological beliefs and social networking are encouraged. Baptist chaplains at Mars Hill Univeristy and the University of Virginia agree.

By Jeff Brumley

Theological beliefs and belonging to religious organizations can help college women overcome the emotional damage caused by sexual abuse, a recently published Baylor University study has found.

The authors of the study say involvement in faith communities can restore the trust women lose after becoming victims of sex crimes.

“It’s not just about attendance, but about being embedded in a religious social network and about that being a part of your identity,” researcher Jeffrey Tamburello, a doctoral candidate in sociology at Baylor, said in a university report about the study. “This might help to mitigate some of the negative effects of being victimized.”

Baptist ministers who work as college chaplains said the study rings true from their experiences working with victims, their friends and other students indirectly touched by campus sex abuse.

Sources of identity

“It makes total sense that anyone involved in a steady and stable community is going to be able to feel that sense of trust — and a religious community adds elements like hope and healing,” said Stephanie McLeskey, university chaplain at Mars Hill University in North Carolina.

The subject of sexual assault is always a passionate one on college campuses. McLeskey said it’s often a topic for her at Mars Hill, both in educational settings and one-on-one with women who are unsure if what happened to them was abuse.

“It’s an ongoing topic of conversation,” she said.

But it’s the conversations within religious groups that can be especially healing for victims of sexual assault, she added, because it’s in those environments where hope is consistently modeled.

“The faith stories that we are immersed in, if we are part of a community, are stories of people who are hurt, but heal; of people who mess up, but are forgiven; and people who are lost, but are brought back.”

Another beneficial aspect of community is its ability to reinforce identity, which is the very thing sex crime victims often question in the aftermath of being assaulted.

“A strong community reminds us who we are,” McLeskey said.

Most importantly it’s a reminder that they are not defined as victims.

Community “reminds us we are valued and needed and we are beloved,” she said. “And that gives us the foundation for healing.”

More church means more trust

The Baylor study, “Religious Coping: The Role of Religion in Attenuating the Effect of Sexual Victimization of College Women on Trust,” said the healing begins with the restoration of trust provided by church groups.

Published in the journal Review of Religious Research, the survey consisted of a sample of 1,580 undergraduate women and data from another study about violence against women. The students were asked if and how they attended religious services and whether they had been sexually victimized within the past year. They also were asked how much they trust other people.

And they were asked to what extent they agreed with the statement, “Most people are out for themselves. I don’t trust them very much.”

The answers were revealing.

“It’s important to find ways for victims to come back to as much of a normal life as they can, and it seems that religious participation can help them do that,” Tamburello said in the Baylor report.

“What we found is that the more you go to church, the more you trust.”

‘A scattering of trust’

Blake Tommey said he has seen the importance of trust in the ongoing turmoil surrounding the campus sex scandal at the University of Virginia.

“It shows up on my plate because it shows up directly on every student’s plate when something like that occurs at their school,” said Tommey, director of the Baptist collegiate ministry at UVA.

The scandal has been on the nation’s plate since November, when a Rolling Stone magazine article appeared — later discredited — about seven men raping a woman at a fraternity house.

“While those claims later fell apart, the swirl of questions over how the university responds to sexual assault claims endures,” the Daily Progress in Charlottesville reported on Feb. 6.

It also continues in student conversations at UVA, Tommey said. The fact the original story involved one female and seven men didn’t limit the impact to them or to a fraternity house.

Women and men across campus felt unsafe and many continue to question the reliability of university officials and other authorities to handle such cases, he said.

“It was a scattering and a confusion of trust,” he said. “Do we distrust the writer, Rolling Stone, the Greek system, our chancellor?”

The atmosphere of honesty that permeates many churches is why they are healing places for people grappling with issues of trust, Tommey said.

“The church and the Christian community is a place where people process goodness and trustworthiness,” he said. “Nothing can be more healing than honesty.”

The Baylor study also noted that theological beliefs can help sex assault victims recover. Tommey said this can be the case as long as those beliefs aren’t of the self-judging, theodicy variety that leads to conclusions that the crime was deserved or perpetrated by a judgmental God.

“The belief that God is a loving God on the move in our lives and communities to heal us and to save us in an ongoing way and to transform us is the most conducive to the recovery of wholeness for victims of sexual violence,” Tommey said.

]]>

A Baylor study finds that college women who are sexual assault victims can find healing in religious groups where strong theological beliefs and social networking are encouraged. Baptist chaplains at Mars Hill Univeristy and the University of Virginia agree.

By Jeff Brumley

Theological beliefs and belonging to religious organizations can help college women overcome the emotional damage caused by sexual abuse, a recently published Baylor University study has found.

The authors of the study say involvement in faith communities can restore the trust women lose after becoming victims of sex crimes.

“It’s not just about attendance, but about being embedded in a religious social network and about that being a part of your identity,” researcher Jeffrey Tamburello, a doctoral candidate in sociology at Baylor, said in a university report about the study. “This might help to mitigate some of the negative effects of being victimized.”

Baptist ministers who work as college chaplains said the study rings true from their experiences working with victims, their friends and other students indirectly touched by campus sex abuse.

Sources of identity

“It makes total sense that anyone involved in a steady and stable community is going to be able to feel that sense of trust — and a religious community adds elements like hope and healing,” said Stephanie McLeskey, university chaplain at Mars Hill University in North Carolina.

The subject of sexual assault is always a passionate one on college campuses. McLeskey said it’s often a topic for her at Mars Hill, both in educational settings and one-on-one with women who are unsure if what happened to them was abuse.

“It’s an ongoing topic of conversation,” she said.

But it’s the conversations within religious groups that can be especially healing for victims of sexual assault, she added, because it’s in those environments where hope is consistently modeled.

“The faith stories that we are immersed in, if we are part of a community, are stories of people who are hurt, but heal; of people who mess up, but are forgiven; and people who are lost, but are brought back.”

Another beneficial aspect of community is its ability to reinforce identity, which is the very thing sex crime victims often question in the aftermath of being assaulted.

“A strong community reminds us who we are,” McLeskey said.

Most importantly it’s a reminder that they are not defined as victims.

Community “reminds us we are valued and needed and we are beloved,” she said. “And that gives us the foundation for healing.”

More church means more trust

The Baylor study, “Religious Coping: The Role of Religion in Attenuating the Effect of Sexual Victimization of College Women on Trust,” said the healing begins with the restoration of trust provided by church groups.

Published in the journal Review of Religious Research, the survey consisted of a sample of 1,580 undergraduate women and data from another study about violence against women. The students were asked if and how they attended religious services and whether they had been sexually victimized within the past year. They also were asked how much they trust other people.

And they were asked to what extent they agreed with the statement, “Most people are out for themselves. I don’t trust them very much.”

The answers were revealing.

“It’s important to find ways for victims to come back to as much of a normal life as they can, and it seems that religious participation can help them do that,” Tamburello said in the Baylor report.

“What we found is that the more you go to church, the more you trust.”

‘A scattering of trust’

Blake Tommey said he has seen the importance of trust in the ongoing turmoil surrounding the campus sex scandal at the University of Virginia.

“It shows up on my plate because it shows up directly on every student’s plate when something like that occurs at their school,” said Tommey, director of the Baptist collegiate ministry at UVA.

The scandal has been on the nation’s plate since November, when a Rolling Stone magazine article appeared — later discredited — about seven men raping a woman at a fraternity house.

“While those claims later fell apart, the swirl of questions over how the university responds to sexual assault claims endures,” the Daily Progress in Charlottesville reported on Feb. 6.

It also continues in student conversations at UVA, Tommey said. The fact the original story involved one female and seven men didn’t limit the impact to them or to a fraternity house.

Women and men across campus felt unsafe and many continue to question the reliability of university officials and other authorities to handle such cases, he said.

“It was a scattering and a confusion of trust,” he said. “Do we distrust the writer, Rolling Stone, the Greek system, our chancellor?”

The atmosphere of honesty that permeates many churches is why they are healing places for people grappling with issues of trust, Tommey said.

“The church and the Christian community is a place where people process goodness and trustworthiness,” he said. “Nothing can be more healing than honesty.”

The Baylor study also noted that theological beliefs can help sex assault victims recover. Tommey said this can be the case as long as those beliefs aren’t of the self-judging, theodicy variety that leads to conclusions that the crime was deserved or perpetrated by a judgmental God.

“The belief that God is a loving God on the move in our lives and communities to heal us and to save us in an ongoing way and to transform us is the most conducive to the recovery of wholeness for victims of sexual violence,” Tommey said.

]]>Jeff BrumleySocial IssuesWed, 11 Feb 2015 13:47:49 -0500Abuse victim sues Baptist church in Dallashttp://baptistnews.com/culture/social-issues/item/29793-abuse-victim-sues-texas-baptist-church
http://baptistnews.com/culture/social-issues/item/29793-abuse-victim-sues-texas-baptist-churchA former youth minister convicted of sex crimes against youth could not have acted without negligence by the church that hired and supervised him, according to a lawsuit filed this week in Dallas.

By Bob Allen

A Southern Baptist church in Texas has been sued for $1 million by an unidentified woman who claims lack of oversight enabled a former youth minister and his younger brother to sexually abuse her as a teenager.

A lawsuit filed Feb. 3 in Dallas County District Court alleges negligence, breach of fiduciary duty and vicarious liability by Arapaho Road Baptist Church in Garland, Texas.

Joshua Earls, the former student pastor at the church affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Southern Baptist Convention, pleaded guilty in federal court to child pornography charges in 2013. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

His younger brother, Jordan “Jordy” Earls, was not officially employed by the church but helped his brother with music and as a youth-group volunteer. The lawsuit claims the brothers, who shared an apartment, groomed several girls in the youth group and with the plaintiff it escalated to weekly sexual abuse by Jordy Earls during her sophomore and junior years in high school.

The lawsuit says the brothers departed abruptly in 2013, telling youth they were “called” to other ministry assignments in South Carolina. The truth, however, was that the family of another girl told police that Josh Earls had molested their minor daughter at a pool party in 2012.

Josh Earls was extradited to Texas to face federal charges of making pornographic images and videos involving multiple underage girls from Arapaho Road Baptist Church. Jordy Earls also confessed to child pornography in a sealed plea agreement entered March 18, 2014, and is scheduled for sentencing Feb. 18 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

The lawsuit says parents reported inappropriate behavior to church leaders, who assured them their concerns would be addressed and that the brothers “would be talked to,” but the suit claims their access to girls in the youth group continued unfettered. When the girl’s mother complained about a lewd cartoon Josh Earls sent to children in 2012, she was told he had already resigned but was staying on until July 2013 to train his replacement.

The lawsuit claims church leaders made “numerous falsehoods,” including assurance that Jordy Earls was a “man of good moral character” who could be trusted with counseling, teaching and instruction of children.

Those and other representations, the lawsuit claims, were either “known to be false and misleading at the time they were made” or “were made with a reckless disregard as to whether they were true or false or of potential consequence to members of the congregation.”

The lawsuit seeks damages for mental anguish, medical and counseling expenses, physical pain and suffering the likelihood of lost earning capacity in the future. It also seeks punitive damages including monetary relief of more than $1 million.

“All the young women who have come forward to confront the Earls brothers and to speak out are truly brave,” said Dallas attorney Tahira Khan Merritt, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of a client identified as Jane Doe 103. “It takes great courage to have gone through the criminal process, which has taken about two years.”

Merritt’s civil law practice of more than 20 years is dedicated exclusively to representing victims of sexual abuse and assault.

“My hope is that Arapaho Road Baptist Church will disclose the truth about what they knew of the risks these perpetrators posed and their misconduct and when they knew,” Merritt said in a press release. “This victim deserves the truth.”

Church officials said they just learned about the lawsuit and hadn’t yet been served a copy, but now that it’s filed the matter will be turned over to attorneys.

“From the moment we learned of these allegations, we have been transparent and open about the situation with our staff, congregation, students, investigators and the community,” they said in a statement. “This is the only way healing can truly happen. We ask the community to join us in prayer for all those involved.”

]]>A former youth minister convicted of sex crimes against youth could not have acted without negligence by the church that hired and supervised him, according to a lawsuit filed this week in Dallas.

By Bob Allen

A Southern Baptist church in Texas has been sued for $1 million by an unidentified woman who claims lack of oversight enabled a former youth minister and his younger brother to sexually abuse her as a teenager.

A lawsuit filed Feb. 3 in Dallas County District Court alleges negligence, breach of fiduciary duty and vicarious liability by Arapaho Road Baptist Church in Garland, Texas.

Joshua Earls, the former student pastor at the church affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Southern Baptist Convention, pleaded guilty in federal court to child pornography charges in 2013. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

His younger brother, Jordan “Jordy” Earls, was not officially employed by the church but helped his brother with music and as a youth-group volunteer. The lawsuit claims the brothers, who shared an apartment, groomed several girls in the youth group and with the plaintiff it escalated to weekly sexual abuse by Jordy Earls during her sophomore and junior years in high school.

The lawsuit says the brothers departed abruptly in 2013, telling youth they were “called” to other ministry assignments in South Carolina. The truth, however, was that the family of another girl told police that Josh Earls had molested their minor daughter at a pool party in 2012.

Josh Earls was extradited to Texas to face federal charges of making pornographic images and videos involving multiple underage girls from Arapaho Road Baptist Church. Jordy Earls also confessed to child pornography in a sealed plea agreement entered March 18, 2014, and is scheduled for sentencing Feb. 18 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

The lawsuit says parents reported inappropriate behavior to church leaders, who assured them their concerns would be addressed and that the brothers “would be talked to,” but the suit claims their access to girls in the youth group continued unfettered. When the girl’s mother complained about a lewd cartoon Josh Earls sent to children in 2012, she was told he had already resigned but was staying on until July 2013 to train his replacement.

The lawsuit claims church leaders made “numerous falsehoods,” including assurance that Jordy Earls was a “man of good moral character” who could be trusted with counseling, teaching and instruction of children.

Those and other representations, the lawsuit claims, were either “known to be false and misleading at the time they were made” or “were made with a reckless disregard as to whether they were true or false or of potential consequence to members of the congregation.”

The lawsuit seeks damages for mental anguish, medical and counseling expenses, physical pain and suffering the likelihood of lost earning capacity in the future. It also seeks punitive damages including monetary relief of more than $1 million.

“All the young women who have come forward to confront the Earls brothers and to speak out are truly brave,” said Dallas attorney Tahira Khan Merritt, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of a client identified as Jane Doe 103. “It takes great courage to have gone through the criminal process, which has taken about two years.”

Merritt’s civil law practice of more than 20 years is dedicated exclusively to representing victims of sexual abuse and assault.

“My hope is that Arapaho Road Baptist Church will disclose the truth about what they knew of the risks these perpetrators posed and their misconduct and when they knew,” Merritt said in a press release. “This victim deserves the truth.”

Church officials said they just learned about the lawsuit and hadn’t yet been served a copy, but now that it’s filed the matter will be turned over to attorneys.

“From the moment we learned of these allegations, we have been transparent and open about the situation with our staff, congregation, students, investigators and the community,” they said in a statement. “This is the only way healing can truly happen. We ask the community to join us in prayer for all those involved.”

]]>Bob AllenSocial IssuesFri, 06 Feb 2015 13:47:57 -0500Baptist pastor charged with abusehttp://baptistnews.com/culture/social-issues/item/29693-baptist-pastor-charged-with-abuse
http://baptistnews.com/culture/social-issues/item/29693-baptist-pastor-charged-with-abuseNew York State Police accuse the pastor of a small American Baptist church of sexually abusing a child in 2008.

By Bob Allen

An American Baptist pastor in New York state is under arrest on felony charges of sexually abusing a 9-year-old girl.

New York State Police arrested Thomas Wilson, 63, of Watertown, N.Y., on one count of first-degree sexual abuse, a Class D felony punishable by two to seven years in prison, and a misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child.

Local media say the alleged abuse occurred in 2008 with the daughter of a family friend and did not appear to be related to Wilson’s duties at the church.

Wilson was released after posting $2,500 bail pending action by a grand jury.

]]>New York State Police accuse the pastor of a small American Baptist church of sexually abusing a child in 2008.

By Bob Allen

An American Baptist pastor in New York state is under arrest on felony charges of sexually abusing a 9-year-old girl.

New York State Police arrested Thomas Wilson, 63, of Watertown, N.Y., on one count of first-degree sexual abuse, a Class D felony punishable by two to seven years in prison, and a misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child.

The trial of a Missouri Baptist preacher charged with child sexual abuse has been continued until Jan. 16, according to court documents quoted by a local newspaper.

Travis R. Smith, 44, arrested in 2012 on felony charges alleging incidents in 1998, 1999 and 2005, was due to stand trial beginning Tuesday, Dec. 2, in Moniteau County Court. According to the California Democrat, Smith and his lawyer appeared in court Nov. 26 and were assigned a new court date after the first of the year.

Smith’s legal problems drew attention from the Missouri Baptist Convention after media reported that members of First Baptist Church in Stover, Mo., were standing by their accused pastor. A convention official acknowledged the body has no direct authority over a local church but expressed hope that members of the congregation “will have the wisdom, grace and courage to act biblically in their dealings with their pastor.”

Lamine Baptist Association withdrew fellowship from the church in 2013, but the stated reason was for non-participation rather than accusations involving the pastor. The First Baptist Church website no longerlists Smith as pastor.

In 2011, Smith was acquitted of child molestation on previous charges in another county.

]]>A Missouri pastor whose former church drew media attention for supporting him despite charges of child sex abuse may finally get his day in court.

By Bob Allen

The trial of a Missouri Baptist preacher charged with child sexual abuse has been continued until Jan. 16, according to court documents quoted by a local newspaper.

Travis R. Smith, 44, arrested in 2012 on felony charges alleging incidents in 1998, 1999 and 2005, was due to stand trial beginning Tuesday, Dec. 2, in Moniteau County Court. According to the California Democrat, Smith and his lawyer appeared in court Nov. 26 and were assigned a new court date after the first of the year.

Smith’s legal problems drew attention from the Missouri Baptist Convention after media reported that members of First Baptist Church in Stover, Mo., were standing by their accused pastor. A convention official acknowledged the body has no direct authority over a local church but expressed hope that members of the congregation “will have the wisdom, grace and courage to act biblically in their dealings with their pastor.”

Lamine Baptist Association withdrew fellowship from the church in 2013, but the stated reason was for non-participation rather than accusations involving the pastor. The First Baptist Church website no longerlists Smith as pastor.

In 2011, Smith was acquitted of child molestation on previous charges in another county.

A former youth pastor at a Southern Baptist church in Charlottesville, Va., is under arrest for the alleged sexual assault of a child under his care.

Jacob Daniel “Jake” Kepple, 35, resigned his post at First Baptist Church in Charlottesville, Va., in July, after allegations surfaced that he sexually abused a child, who is now an adult, between Sept. 1, 2009, and Oct. 27, 2011.

Kepple was arrested last week on two felony counts of taking indecent liberties with a child, the Daily Progress in Charlottesville reported. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

A preliminary hearing for Kepple is scheduled Feb. 6 in Charlottesville Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.

]]>A former youth pastor at First Baptist Church on Park Street in Charlottesville, Va., faces charges of taking indecent liberties with a child.

By Bob Allen

A former youth pastor at a Southern Baptist church in Charlottesville, Va., is under arrest for the alleged sexual assault of a child under his care.

Jacob Daniel “Jake” Kepple, 35, resigned his post at First Baptist Church in Charlottesville, Va., in July, after allegations surfaced that he sexually abused a child, who is now an adult, between Sept. 1, 2009, and Oct. 27, 2011.

Kepple was arrested last week on two felony counts of taking indecent liberties with a child, the Daily Progress in Charlottesville reported. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

A preliminary hearing for Kepple is scheduled Feb. 6 in Charlottesville Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.

A 74-year-old former Southern Baptist youth pastor pleaded guilty Dec. 1 to six charges of sexually abusing minors in Jefferson County, Ala. Mack Allen Davis, former youth minister at Lakeside Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., still faces charges involving the same victims in two other counties, according to the Birmingham News.

Davis is accused of molesting two boys over the course of a decade from the late 1970s to the late 1980s in various locations including his church office and a Christian camp. One of his accusers claimed in May that the pastor at the time — now director of missions at an association of Southern Baptist churches — knew about the abuse in the 1990s but kept it quiet to protect the church’s reputation.

Leaders of the Birmingham Baptist Association investigated DOM Mike McLemore’s handling of the matter in 2010 and reported that that no one “has seen any information to support the charge that Dr. McLemore knowingly protected a pedophile during his tenure as pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church.”

Davis came to Lakeside Baptist Church in 1977 as minister of youth and recreation and the following summer was also named director of the church’s camp. He retired in 1999 at age 59 after his wife filed for divorce.

McLemore said this summer he handled the matter discretely at the family’s request. A state law requiring the reporting of suspected child abuse wasn’t amended to include clergy until 2003, and the current law exempts ministers if someone seeking spiritual advice asks them to keep it confidential.

A 74-year-old former Southern Baptist youth pastor pleaded guilty Dec. 1 to six charges of sexually abusing minors in Jefferson County, Ala. Mack Allen Davis, former youth minister at Lakeside Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., still faces charges involving the same victims in two other counties, according to the Birmingham News.

Davis is accused of molesting two boys over the course of a decade from the late 1970s to the late 1980s in various locations including his church office and a Christian camp. One of his accusers claimed in May that the pastor at the time — now director of missions at an association of Southern Baptist churches — knew about the abuse in the 1990s but kept it quiet to protect the church’s reputation.

Leaders of the Birmingham Baptist Association investigated DOM Mike McLemore’s handling of the matter in 2010 and reported that that no one “has seen any information to support the charge that Dr. McLemore knowingly protected a pedophile during his tenure as pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church.”

Davis came to Lakeside Baptist Church in 1977 as minister of youth and recreation and the following summer was also named director of the church’s camp. He retired in 1999 at age 59 after his wife filed for divorce.

McLemore said this summer he handled the matter discretely at the family’s request. A state law requiring the reporting of suspected child abuse wasn’t amended to include clergy until 2003, and the current law exempts ministers if someone seeking spiritual advice asks them to keep it confidential.

]]>Bob AllenSocial IssuesWed, 03 Dec 2014 10:41:00 -0500Anti-abuse group archives member storieshttp://baptistnews.com/culture/social-issues/item/29451-anti-abuse-group-archives-member-stories
http://baptistnews.com/culture/social-issues/item/29451-anti-abuse-group-archives-member-storiesAmy Smith, a Baptist leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, says she has paid a price for exposing a now-convicted sex offender, but she would do it all over again.

By Bob Allen

A victims’ advocate says she believes it’s important to talk about a Southern Baptist megachurch’s mishandling of alleged child sex abuse 25 years ago so other churches don’t repeat the same mistakes today.

“This is a story that needs to be told to protect other kids,” Amy Smith, a Baptist representative of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in an August interview posted Oct 22 on her blog.

Smith, 45, shared her story in an oral history project commemorating the 25th anniversary of SNAP, a support and advocacy group formed during the Roman Catholic Church sex scandal that today boasts 12,000 members in various denominations.

Smith said her involvement with SNAP began about four years ago, when she started acting on something that had been bothering her for a long time. While she was in college her youth choir director and close friend to her family left their church abruptly in 1989 without explanation.

Rumors circulated that he was fired after confessing that he had molested several boys. “We were very upset, hearing that he had done these horrible things, yet not knowing what to do with that knowledge,” she said.

“How could this be?” she remembered feeling. “How could this person that I looked up to, that I loved as a friend, really, like a family member — and feeling very betrayed and angry — and then he’s gone. We didn’t get to say goodbye. He’s gone.”

Smith said it wasn’t addressed publicly by the church staff or from the pulpit, so she “just kind of dealt with it privately and internally.”

“I got on with my life, but it always bothered me: where he was and what he was doing,” she said. “And the fear that maybe he could be harming other kids.”

There wasn’t really any way to know, however, until the Internet came along. Smith found out her former minister was working at another church in another state and also in the local school system. She set out to inform both the school and church about the minister’s past.

As a result of internal pressure, the man eventually confessed to his church of “indiscretions” with younger males decades ago. That prompted several men to come forward claiming as children they were victimized by the man who babysat for their parents while he was in college and ministering in their church.

John Langworthy, former longtime associate pastor of music and ministries at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, Miss., pleaded guilty in January 2013 to five felony counts of gratification of lust. He received a suspended sentence of 50 years, meaning no time in prison, in a plea bargain offered in part because it took so long for the allegations to surface that prosecutors feared the charges might not stand up in court due to an ambiguous statute of limitations.

Smith said after Langworthy left Mississippi in the 1980s, the same pattern started all over again at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas, where she happened to be serving on staff at the time as a college intern.

“But because he wasn’t reported he was able to escape prosecution, go back to Mississippi and then for decades was completely unexposed, until mounting pressure behind the scenes of me calling and trying to get the truth out there with the help of an investigative reporter in Dallas,” she said.

Smith said she wasn’t surprised when her parents, who were so close to Langworthy that while he was in seminary for a time he lived in their home, would not be as interested as she was in exposing him, but she wasn’t prepared for outright opposition.

She said she has been told that her parents never want to see her again — or her husband and four children — and warned by her father that she and her family “are going to pay a big price for what’s been done here.”

“What he’s referring to — what’s been done here — is exposing a now-convicted child sex offender and the cover up,” she explained.

Smith said people have asked her if she would do it over again. Is it worth the personal pain?

“I never would have dreamed that I would be disowned and rejected by my parents for what I know is the right thing, because I have heard from his victims,” she said. “I’ve seen them. I’ve met them.”

“I went to Mississippi and was in the courtroom, and I saw the mother of one of his victims thank me,” she said. “I never met her before and didn’t know her before any of this journey, and she was able to walk over in the courtroom, right before he pled guilty. She told me all she ever wanted to do was just look him in the eye, and she got to do that.”

Asked about the impact of the experience on her faith, Smith responded: “In a way I’d say my own personal identity as a Christian, it has actually made me stronger, because my faith in the Lord, in knowing that God loves me and who I am — I’ve had to become so grounded in that.”

“My identity as a Christian is not in what church I go to or because of what a big-wig celebrity pastor says about me,” she said.

“Nothing that I’ve done is because I hate the church or am against Christianity or any religion,” she said. “It’s because I care about the churches.”

“My faith is rooted not in an institution but in my personal relationship with Jesus,” she said. “I’ve had to really rely [on that], with all the externals taken away.”

Smith said her message to church members is: “That initial trust that we kind of just want to assume should be there for pastors and clergy — just because someone says certain things or looks a certain way or has a certain title in the church, does not mean that they are safe.”

Smith admits to harboring a tinge of self-doubt — “am I a bad person because my parents hate me?” — but by and large has no regrets about speaking out. “I think I would have still had that guilt if I hadn’t done it.”

Smith’s story is part of a partnership between SNAP and StoryCorps, an oral history project that has collected and archived more than 50,000 interviews with over 90,000 since 2003. With the storyteller's permission, each conversation is recorded on a CD to share and is preserved at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

To help commemorate the 25th anniversary of SNAP at this summer’s 2014 national conference, StoryCorps reserved two full recording days for SNAP members to share their stories. Since then, others have been able to record at the StoryCorps booths in San Francisco, Atlanta and Chicago.

“I’m not going to stop doing what I do,” Smith pledged. “I’m not going to stop helping to protect kids and exposing the truth.”

]]>Amy Smith, a Baptist leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, says she has paid a price for exposing a now-convicted sex offender, but she would do it all over again.

By Bob Allen

A victims’ advocate says she believes it’s important to talk about a Southern Baptist megachurch’s mishandling of alleged child sex abuse 25 years ago so other churches don’t repeat the same mistakes today.

“This is a story that needs to be told to protect other kids,” Amy Smith, a Baptist representative of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in an August interview posted Oct 22 on her blog.

Smith, 45, shared her story in an oral history project commemorating the 25th anniversary of SNAP, a support and advocacy group formed during the Roman Catholic Church sex scandal that today boasts 12,000 members in various denominations.

Smith said her involvement with SNAP began about four years ago, when she started acting on something that had been bothering her for a long time. While she was in college her youth choir director and close friend to her family left their church abruptly in 1989 without explanation.

Rumors circulated that he was fired after confessing that he had molested several boys. “We were very upset, hearing that he had done these horrible things, yet not knowing what to do with that knowledge,” she said.

“How could this be?” she remembered feeling. “How could this person that I looked up to, that I loved as a friend, really, like a family member — and feeling very betrayed and angry — and then he’s gone. We didn’t get to say goodbye. He’s gone.”

Smith said it wasn’t addressed publicly by the church staff or from the pulpit, so she “just kind of dealt with it privately and internally.”

“I got on with my life, but it always bothered me: where he was and what he was doing,” she said. “And the fear that maybe he could be harming other kids.”

There wasn’t really any way to know, however, until the Internet came along. Smith found out her former minister was working at another church in another state and also in the local school system. She set out to inform both the school and church about the minister’s past.

As a result of internal pressure, the man eventually confessed to his church of “indiscretions” with younger males decades ago. That prompted several men to come forward claiming as children they were victimized by the man who babysat for their parents while he was in college and ministering in their church.

John Langworthy, former longtime associate pastor of music and ministries at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, Miss., pleaded guilty in January 2013 to five felony counts of gratification of lust. He received a suspended sentence of 50 years, meaning no time in prison, in a plea bargain offered in part because it took so long for the allegations to surface that prosecutors feared the charges might not stand up in court due to an ambiguous statute of limitations.

Smith said after Langworthy left Mississippi in the 1980s, the same pattern started all over again at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas, where she happened to be serving on staff at the time as a college intern.

“But because he wasn’t reported he was able to escape prosecution, go back to Mississippi and then for decades was completely unexposed, until mounting pressure behind the scenes of me calling and trying to get the truth out there with the help of an investigative reporter in Dallas,” she said.

Smith said she wasn’t surprised when her parents, who were so close to Langworthy that while he was in seminary for a time he lived in their home, would not be as interested as she was in exposing him, but she wasn’t prepared for outright opposition.

She said she has been told that her parents never want to see her again — or her husband and four children — and warned by her father that she and her family “are going to pay a big price for what’s been done here.”

“What he’s referring to — what’s been done here — is exposing a now-convicted child sex offender and the cover up,” she explained.

Smith said people have asked her if she would do it over again. Is it worth the personal pain?

“I never would have dreamed that I would be disowned and rejected by my parents for what I know is the right thing, because I have heard from his victims,” she said. “I’ve seen them. I’ve met them.”

“I went to Mississippi and was in the courtroom, and I saw the mother of one of his victims thank me,” she said. “I never met her before and didn’t know her before any of this journey, and she was able to walk over in the courtroom, right before he pled guilty. She told me all she ever wanted to do was just look him in the eye, and she got to do that.”

Asked about the impact of the experience on her faith, Smith responded: “In a way I’d say my own personal identity as a Christian, it has actually made me stronger, because my faith in the Lord, in knowing that God loves me and who I am — I’ve had to become so grounded in that.”

“My identity as a Christian is not in what church I go to or because of what a big-wig celebrity pastor says about me,” she said.

“Nothing that I’ve done is because I hate the church or am against Christianity or any religion,” she said. “It’s because I care about the churches.”

“My faith is rooted not in an institution but in my personal relationship with Jesus,” she said. “I’ve had to really rely [on that], with all the externals taken away.”

Smith said her message to church members is: “That initial trust that we kind of just want to assume should be there for pastors and clergy — just because someone says certain things or looks a certain way or has a certain title in the church, does not mean that they are safe.”

Smith admits to harboring a tinge of self-doubt — “am I a bad person because my parents hate me?” — but by and large has no regrets about speaking out. “I think I would have still had that guilt if I hadn’t done it.”

Smith’s story is part of a partnership between SNAP and StoryCorps, an oral history project that has collected and archived more than 50,000 interviews with over 90,000 since 2003. With the storyteller's permission, each conversation is recorded on a CD to share and is preserved at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

To help commemorate the 25th anniversary of SNAP at this summer’s 2014 national conference, StoryCorps reserved two full recording days for SNAP members to share their stories. Since then, others have been able to record at the StoryCorps booths in San Francisco, Atlanta and Chicago.

“I’m not going to stop doing what I do,” Smith pledged. “I’m not going to stop helping to protect kids and exposing the truth.”

A Southern Baptist music minister remains in custody after his Oct. 16 arrest by the FBI's Child Exploitation Task Force in LaGrange, Ky.

Howard Key Chambers, 62, minister of music at DeHaven Baptist Church in La Grange, Ky., was denied bail Oct. 22 in U.S. District Court. According to local media Magistrate Judge James D. Moyer denied a motion to release Chambers on $50,000 bond on home incarceration in part because of his history of working in the church.

"All this looks, frankly, like the fox inside the chicken coop," Moyer said, according to Louisville television station WDRB.

Chambers, who goes by his middle name of “Key,” was booked into the Oldham County Jail on unspecified federal charges described in an FBI press release as “related to the sexual exploitation of children."

At last week’s hearing in Louisville, prosecutors claimed Chambers posted an ad describing a sex fantasy on Craigslist, and through it met a man who offered to let him pay to have sex with his 10-year-old daughter. Chambers allegedly engaged in sex acts with the girl, now 11, seven or eight times during the past year, paying $100 to $200 to the father in exchange.

In a recorded interview, Chambers told investigators he kept returning because he feared the father would tell police what he had done. The father also faces federal charges, but he is not being identified out of concern for the child.

Members of DeHaven Baptist Church said the allegations against Chambers don’t match the man they know.

“This kind of thing just really took the wind out of us,” church member Gary Rawlings told WDRB. Rawlings said he usually ate dinner with Chambers at the church on Wednesday night. “Really a fine, fine fellow,” he said, “was doing a great job as a music minister.”

DeHaven Baptist Church is affiliated locally with Oldham-Trimble Baptist Association and nationally with the Southern Baptist Convention. The current pastor, Ross Bauscher, formerly worked for the Kentucky Baptist Convention as evangelism growth team leader. He stepped down after 11 years, along with 22 other full-time and four part-time employees who accepted incentive packages to resign or retire in anticipation of a staff downsizing in 2012.

A Southern Baptist music minister remains in custody after his Oct. 16 arrest by the FBI's Child Exploitation Task Force in LaGrange, Ky.

Howard Key Chambers, 62, minister of music at DeHaven Baptist Church in La Grange, Ky., was denied bail Oct. 22 in U.S. District Court. According to local media Magistrate Judge James D. Moyer denied a motion to release Chambers on $50,000 bond on home incarceration in part because of his history of working in the church.

"All this looks, frankly, like the fox inside the chicken coop," Moyer said, according to Louisville television station WDRB.

Chambers, who goes by his middle name of “Key,” was booked into the Oldham County Jail on unspecified federal charges described in an FBI press release as “related to the sexual exploitation of children."

At last week’s hearing in Louisville, prosecutors claimed Chambers posted an ad describing a sex fantasy on Craigslist, and through it met a man who offered to let him pay to have sex with his 10-year-old daughter. Chambers allegedly engaged in sex acts with the girl, now 11, seven or eight times during the past year, paying $100 to $200 to the father in exchange.

In a recorded interview, Chambers told investigators he kept returning because he feared the father would tell police what he had done. The father also faces federal charges, but he is not being identified out of concern for the child.

Members of DeHaven Baptist Church said the allegations against Chambers don’t match the man they know.

“This kind of thing just really took the wind out of us,” church member Gary Rawlings told WDRB. Rawlings said he usually ate dinner with Chambers at the church on Wednesday night. “Really a fine, fine fellow,” he said, “was doing a great job as a music minister.”

DeHaven Baptist Church is affiliated locally with Oldham-Trimble Baptist Association and nationally with the Southern Baptist Convention. The current pastor, Ross Bauscher, formerly worked for the Kentucky Baptist Convention as evangelism growth team leader. He stepped down after 11 years, along with 22 other full-time and four part-time employees who accepted incentive packages to resign or retire in anticipation of a staff downsizing in 2012.

A national support group for clergy sex-abuse victims called on the National Day of Prayer Task Force to reconsider its choice for 2015 honorary chairman because of unanswered questions about his handling of abuse allegations in the distant past.

Baptist Press announced Oct. 20 that former Southern Baptist Convention President Jack Graham is honorary chairman for the 64th annual National Day of Prayer scheduled May 7 in Washington.

"It is a privilege to lead the National Day of Prayer," said Graham, pastor of the 37,000-member Prestonwood Baptist Church in metropolitan Dallas. "More than anything, in this desperate hour, may our hearts cry out to God for the healing of our nation's spiritual brokenness. May Jesus be exalted and may God's people be awakened to a new obedience to fulfill the Great Commission."

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests responded with a press release claiming that Graham and other church leaders fired a staff member in 1989 for inappropriate behavior with youth but did not call the police.

The staff member, John Langworthy, left town and went on to serve 22 years at another Southern Baptist church in Mississippi. In 2011 Langworthy resigned as associate pastor of music ministries at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, Miss., confessing to the congregation of past “indiscretions” with young boys. That led to his arrest and ultimate conviction on five counts of gratification of lust involving multiple boys he met through church work in the 1980s.

Langworthy received a suspended sentence of 50 years, meaning no time in prison, in a plea bargain offered in part because it took so long for the allegations to surface prosecutors feared the charges might not stand up in court due to an ambiguous statute of limitations.

Prestonwood’s executive pastor released a statement denying that church leaders tried to conceal the allegations against Langworthy or silence his accuser. Graham, who had only been on the job a short time when Langworthy left, has declined to discuss the matter. When a church member tried to force the issue through social media in 2013, he was reported to police as a potential security threat.

Amy Smith, a SNAP representative in Houston who first brought the allegations against Langworthy to light, said rewarding Graham with an honorary title “sends a dangerous message to other officials.”

“Don’t worry about kids’ safety. Just focus on secrecy, and your career will be fine.”

“For the safety of kids and the healing of victims, we hope members of the National Day of Prayer Task Force will reconsider their decision, disinvite Graham, and replace him with another minister who doesn’t have such a tarnished record,” Smith said.

A National Day of Prayer Task Force communications official did not respond to an e-mail request for comment.

In June SNAP asked the Southern Baptist Convention to enlist an independent investigator to answer questions about both Prestonwood’s and Morrison Heights’ handling of the Langworthy affair. Protestors outside this year’s SBC meeting in Baltimore handed out fliers asking Baptist officials to “take child sex abuse cases more seriously.”

In 2006-2007 the SBC Executive Committee explored the idea of establishing a database of known or credibly accused Southern Baptist offenders and a central office to receive and evaluate abuse reports but in the end determined it unfeasible because each Southern Baptist church is autonomous and should conduct its own investigation.

The convention offers resources to help churches prevent sexual abuse, including discounts on background checks for prospective church workers. LifeWay Christian Resources, the SBC’s publishing house, reported recently that more than one in five background checks processed by LifeWay’s program with backgroundchecks.com revealed a serious offense.

]]>An advocacy group says leaders with questionable policies on handling sex abuse should be corrected, not honored.

By Bob Allen

A national support group for clergy sex-abuse victims called on the National Day of Prayer Task Force to reconsider its choice for 2015 honorary chairman because of unanswered questions about his handling of abuse allegations in the distant past.

Baptist Press announced Oct. 20 that former Southern Baptist Convention President Jack Graham is honorary chairman for the 64th annual National Day of Prayer scheduled May 7 in Washington.

"It is a privilege to lead the National Day of Prayer," said Graham, pastor of the 37,000-member Prestonwood Baptist Church in metropolitan Dallas. "More than anything, in this desperate hour, may our hearts cry out to God for the healing of our nation's spiritual brokenness. May Jesus be exalted and may God's people be awakened to a new obedience to fulfill the Great Commission."

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests responded with a press release claiming that Graham and other church leaders fired a staff member in 1989 for inappropriate behavior with youth but did not call the police.

The staff member, John Langworthy, left town and went on to serve 22 years at another Southern Baptist church in Mississippi. In 2011 Langworthy resigned as associate pastor of music ministries at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, Miss., confessing to the congregation of past “indiscretions” with young boys. That led to his arrest and ultimate conviction on five counts of gratification of lust involving multiple boys he met through church work in the 1980s.

Langworthy received a suspended sentence of 50 years, meaning no time in prison, in a plea bargain offered in part because it took so long for the allegations to surface prosecutors feared the charges might not stand up in court due to an ambiguous statute of limitations.

Prestonwood’s executive pastor released a statement denying that church leaders tried to conceal the allegations against Langworthy or silence his accuser. Graham, who had only been on the job a short time when Langworthy left, has declined to discuss the matter. When a church member tried to force the issue through social media in 2013, he was reported to police as a potential security threat.

Amy Smith, a SNAP representative in Houston who first brought the allegations against Langworthy to light, said rewarding Graham with an honorary title “sends a dangerous message to other officials.”

“Don’t worry about kids’ safety. Just focus on secrecy, and your career will be fine.”

“For the safety of kids and the healing of victims, we hope members of the National Day of Prayer Task Force will reconsider their decision, disinvite Graham, and replace him with another minister who doesn’t have such a tarnished record,” Smith said.

A National Day of Prayer Task Force communications official did not respond to an e-mail request for comment.

In June SNAP asked the Southern Baptist Convention to enlist an independent investigator to answer questions about both Prestonwood’s and Morrison Heights’ handling of the Langworthy affair. Protestors outside this year’s SBC meeting in Baltimore handed out fliers asking Baptist officials to “take child sex abuse cases more seriously.”

In 2006-2007 the SBC Executive Committee explored the idea of establishing a database of known or credibly accused Southern Baptist offenders and a central office to receive and evaluate abuse reports but in the end determined it unfeasible because each Southern Baptist church is autonomous and should conduct its own investigation.

The convention offers resources to help churches prevent sexual abuse, including discounts on background checks for prospective church workers. LifeWay Christian Resources, the SBC’s publishing house, reported recently that more than one in five background checks processed by LifeWay’s program with backgroundchecks.com revealed a serious offense.

A 37-year-old Southern Baptist youth minister is under arrest in Sasche, Texas, on charges stemming from an alleged inappropriate relationship with a 14-year-old girl.

Derek Hutter, minister to students at South Garland Baptist Church in Garland, Texas, faces charges of continuous sexual abuse of a child, possession of child pornography and online solicitation of a minor.

According to local media, the Sachse Police Department arrested Hutter on Friday, Oct. 17 on outstanding warrants. He was taken to the Sachse jail and held on $150,000 bond awaiting transfer to the Dallas County jail.

Police say Hutter began a sexual relationship with a girl he met through his church in January, when she was 13, that continued until September. The girl’s parent called police Oct. 3 after discovering an inappropriate e-mail.

Hutter came to South Garland from First Baptist Church of Urbandale in Dallas in 2007. According to the church website, he has worked on staff or as a consultant or volunteer at a total of seven churches.

In addition to his work with youth, Hutter has been leading the praise team at South Garland Baptist Church’s 11:15 a.m. casual service. He attended Sam Houston University and Slidell Baptist Seminary, a school established in 1994 under the umbrella of Ridge Memorial Baptist Church in Slidell, La.

He is married and has a child.

]]>Texas youth minister Derek Hutter is under arrest for an alleged inappropriate 10-month relationship with a minor he met through his church.

By Bob Allen

A 37-year-old Southern Baptist youth minister is under arrest in Sasche, Texas, on charges stemming from an alleged inappropriate relationship with a 14-year-old girl.

Derek Hutter, minister to students at South Garland Baptist Church in Garland, Texas, faces charges of continuous sexual abuse of a child, possession of child pornography and online solicitation of a minor.

According to local media, the Sachse Police Department arrested Hutter on Friday, Oct. 17 on outstanding warrants. He was taken to the Sachse jail and held on $150,000 bond awaiting transfer to the Dallas County jail.

Police say Hutter began a sexual relationship with a girl he met through his church in January, when she was 13, that continued until September. The girl’s parent called police Oct. 3 after discovering an inappropriate e-mail.

Hutter came to South Garland from First Baptist Church of Urbandale in Dallas in 2007. According to the church website, he has worked on staff or as a consultant or volunteer at a total of seven churches.

In addition to his work with youth, Hutter has been leading the praise team at South Garland Baptist Church’s 11:15 a.m. casual service. He attended Sam Houston University and Slidell Baptist Seminary, a school established in 1994 under the umbrella of Ridge Memorial Baptist Church in Slidell, La.

Maryland’s highest court of appeal declined Sept. 22 to review what has been described as largest evangelical sex-abuse case to date, leaving intact lower-court decisions dismissing the class-action lawsuit on legal technicalities.

The Court of Appeals, the highest tribunal in Maryland, declined without comment to review a June 26 decision by the Court of Special Appeals dismissing Doe v. Sovereign Grace Ministries.

The lawsuit, originally filed in October 2012 in Montgomery County, Md., alleged a culture of enabling and covering up pedophilia in churches associated with Sovereign Grace Ministries, a Calvinistic church-planting network based in Louisville, Ky.

Special Court of Appeals Judge Deborah Eyler ruled that a group of alleged abuse victims and their families did not follow proper procedure in filing their appeal of an earlier dismissal in circuit court, and therefore her appellate court could not legally consider their argument.

In May 2013, Montgomery County Circuit Judge Sharon Burrell ruled that plaintiffs had missed a window of opportunity to sue for sexual abuse damages within three years of turning 18.

In their appeal, the plaintiffs said they were suing not over the abuse, per se, but alleged collusion by church leaders that didn’t come to light until 2011.

None of the decisions dealt with the truthfulness of allegations in a second amended class-action complaint filed May 14, 2013, alleging a conspiracy originating at a church in Maryland and spreading across the country in the “family” of SGM churches.

The 46-page complaint alleged in sometimes graphic detail the molestation of numerous boys and girls by multiple offenders and decisions by SGM leaders to discourage church members from reporting it to secular authorities and handle it internally as a matter of corrective church “discipline.”

Nathaniel Morales, 56, one of the alleged molesters in the civil lawsuit, was convicted Aug. 14 in criminal court and sentenced to 40 years in prison for abusing boys while working in youth ministries and leading Bible studies at SGM-affiliated Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Md.

During testimony, Morales’ lawyer questioned former Covenant Life pastor Grant Layman about whether he withheld information from the police about the abuse allegations against his client.

Prater added, however, that the ministry is reviewing child-protection policies in member churches and will offer child sexual abuse awareness training at a conference for pastors and church leaders later this month.

Susan Burke, the Baltimore attorney who represented the alleged victims in the Maryland lawsuit, said in June that similar litigation will be filed in Virginia in the “relatively near future.”

Maryland’s highest court of appeal declined Sept. 22 to review what has been described as largest evangelical sex-abuse case to date, leaving intact lower-court decisions dismissing the class-action lawsuit on legal technicalities.

The Court of Appeals, the highest tribunal in Maryland, declined without comment to review a June 26 decision by the Court of Special Appeals dismissing Doe v. Sovereign Grace Ministries.

The lawsuit, originally filed in October 2012 in Montgomery County, Md., alleged a culture of enabling and covering up pedophilia in churches associated with Sovereign Grace Ministries, a Calvinistic church-planting network based in Louisville, Ky.

Special Court of Appeals Judge Deborah Eyler ruled that a group of alleged abuse victims and their families did not follow proper procedure in filing their appeal of an earlier dismissal in circuit court, and therefore her appellate court could not legally consider their argument.

In May 2013, Montgomery County Circuit Judge Sharon Burrell ruled that plaintiffs had missed a window of opportunity to sue for sexual abuse damages within three years of turning 18.

In their appeal, the plaintiffs said they were suing not over the abuse, per se, but alleged collusion by church leaders that didn’t come to light until 2011.

None of the decisions dealt with the truthfulness of allegations in a second amended class-action complaint filed May 14, 2013, alleging a conspiracy originating at a church in Maryland and spreading across the country in the “family” of SGM churches.

The 46-page complaint alleged in sometimes graphic detail the molestation of numerous boys and girls by multiple offenders and decisions by SGM leaders to discourage church members from reporting it to secular authorities and handle it internally as a matter of corrective church “discipline.”

Nathaniel Morales, 56, one of the alleged molesters in the civil lawsuit, was convicted Aug. 14 in criminal court and sentenced to 40 years in prison for abusing boys while working in youth ministries and leading Bible studies at SGM-affiliated Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Md.

During testimony, Morales’ lawyer questioned former Covenant Life pastor Grant Layman about whether he withheld information from the police about the abuse allegations against his client.

Prater added, however, that the ministry is reviewing child-protection policies in member churches and will offer child sexual abuse awareness training at a conference for pastors and church leaders later this month.

Susan Burke, the Baltimore attorney who represented the alleged victims in the Maryland lawsuit, said in June that similar litigation will be filed in Virginia in the “relatively near future.”

A Southern Baptist megachurch in Texas is being sued by parents of a teenage girl claiming careless hiring and supervision of a former youth minister in prison for sexual assault of a child.

A lawsuit filed Oct. 1 in Harris County Court accuses Second Baptist Church in Houston of negligent hiring, supervision and retention of Chad Foster, a former youth pastor sentenced last year to five years in prison after pleading guilty to raping a 16-year-old girl in 2011 and soliciting another teen online.

The parents, identified by pseudonyms so their daughter remains anonymous, seek actual damages including the cost of counseling, as well as punitive and “exemplary” damages for “breach of fiduciary duty” after entrusting their daughter to the church’s care and breach of fiduciary and “vicarious liability,” claiming Foster was “acting within the scope of his employment” when he committed his crimes.

The lawsuit describes “a simple yet effective marketing scheme,” where Second Baptist Church entices preteens and teens in public schools with lunches provided by places such as McDonald’s or Pizza Hut. Youth counselors befriend the children they speak with and invite them to church activities.

“What we have here is the proverbial pedophile with candy in his pocket," the victim’s attorney, Cris Feldman, told Houston TV station KPRC Local 2. “Except this pedophile in question was sent into public schools with candy in his pocket provided by Second Baptist.”

The lawsuit says by all appearances the relationship between Foster and the girl, now 17, “started out as one of religious guidance,” before he began to compliment her and eventually ask her to talk “dirty” to him, when she was 12 years old.

Things escalated until “suddenly, and without explanation, Second Baptist quietly passed Foster off to Community of Faith,” another large Houston-area church accused in the lawsuit of allowing the behavior to continue.

The lawsuit claims Foster, who started out as a volunteer but was ordained and offered a paid position at Second Baptist “once his charisma with boys and girls was clear” lacked proper training for working with vulnerable and impressionable youth. “Nevertheless,” it says, “Second Baptist placed Foster in a position that allowed him to manipulate children — specifically Jane Doe II — of sexual submission and exploitation.”

Gary Moore, senior associate pastor at Second Baptist, denied the allegations in a statement to local media. “Second Baptist Church did not know of any of those allegations,” Moore said in comments quoted by KPRC. “If these happened and if Second had been made aware of them, we would have immediately terminated anyone involved and ensured that such conduct did not continue for one minute.”

The lawsuit is the most recent in a series of legal actions seeking to hold Baptist churches and organizations responsible for sexual misconduct of their ministers.

In July, Highland Park Baptist Church in Muscle Shoals, Ala., was hit with a lawsuit by a victim of Jeffery Dale Eddie, longtime associate pastor for children and church administration sentenced to 30 years in prison after telling police he had abused so many children for so long that he couldn’t remember the number. The church is seeking dismissal of the lawsuit, claiming that Eddie’s criminal acts were committed outside the scope of his employment.

The Florida Baptist Convention recently settled for an undisclosed amount a 2006 lawsuit after appealing a jury verdict awarding $12.5 million for failure to check far enough into the background of a church planter convicted in 2007 of sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy.

A recent Florida Baptist Witnessarticle warned that churches increasingly “are attractive targets,” for litigation, “as people think they have a better opportunity for financial gain by suing an organization rather than an individual.”

]]>A lawsuit filed Oct. 1 says a prominent Southern Baptist megachurch is responsible for harm done by a former youth minister now in prison for sexual abuse of a child.

By Bob Allen

A Southern Baptist megachurch in Texas is being sued by parents of a teenage girl claiming careless hiring and supervision of a former youth minister in prison for sexual assault of a child.

A lawsuit filed Oct. 1 in Harris County Court accuses Second Baptist Church in Houston of negligent hiring, supervision and retention of Chad Foster, a former youth pastor sentenced last year to five years in prison after pleading guilty to raping a 16-year-old girl in 2011 and soliciting another teen online.

The parents, identified by pseudonyms so their daughter remains anonymous, seek actual damages including the cost of counseling, as well as punitive and “exemplary” damages for “breach of fiduciary duty” after entrusting their daughter to the church’s care and breach of fiduciary and “vicarious liability,” claiming Foster was “acting within the scope of his employment” when he committed his crimes.

The lawsuit describes “a simple yet effective marketing scheme,” where Second Baptist Church entices preteens and teens in public schools with lunches provided by places such as McDonald’s or Pizza Hut. Youth counselors befriend the children they speak with and invite them to church activities.

“What we have here is the proverbial pedophile with candy in his pocket," the victim’s attorney, Cris Feldman, told Houston TV station KPRC Local 2. “Except this pedophile in question was sent into public schools with candy in his pocket provided by Second Baptist.”

The lawsuit says by all appearances the relationship between Foster and the girl, now 17, “started out as one of religious guidance,” before he began to compliment her and eventually ask her to talk “dirty” to him, when she was 12 years old.

Things escalated until “suddenly, and without explanation, Second Baptist quietly passed Foster off to Community of Faith,” another large Houston-area church accused in the lawsuit of allowing the behavior to continue.

The lawsuit claims Foster, who started out as a volunteer but was ordained and offered a paid position at Second Baptist “once his charisma with boys and girls was clear” lacked proper training for working with vulnerable and impressionable youth. “Nevertheless,” it says, “Second Baptist placed Foster in a position that allowed him to manipulate children — specifically Jane Doe II — of sexual submission and exploitation.”

Gary Moore, senior associate pastor at Second Baptist, denied the allegations in a statement to local media. “Second Baptist Church did not know of any of those allegations,” Moore said in comments quoted by KPRC. “If these happened and if Second had been made aware of them, we would have immediately terminated anyone involved and ensured that such conduct did not continue for one minute.”

The lawsuit is the most recent in a series of legal actions seeking to hold Baptist churches and organizations responsible for sexual misconduct of their ministers.

In July, Highland Park Baptist Church in Muscle Shoals, Ala., was hit with a lawsuit by a victim of Jeffery Dale Eddie, longtime associate pastor for children and church administration sentenced to 30 years in prison after telling police he had abused so many children for so long that he couldn’t remember the number. The church is seeking dismissal of the lawsuit, claiming that Eddie’s criminal acts were committed outside the scope of his employment.

The Florida Baptist Convention recently settled for an undisclosed amount a 2006 lawsuit after appealing a jury verdict awarding $12.5 million for failure to check far enough into the background of a church planter convicted in 2007 of sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy.

A recent Florida Baptist Witnessarticle warned that churches increasingly “are attractive targets,” for litigation, “as people think they have a better opportunity for financial gain by suing an organization rather than an individual.”

]]>Bob AllenSocial IssuesFri, 03 Oct 2014 13:37:21 -0400God made them male and female: The LGBT issue, part 12http://baptistnews.com/opinion/columns/item/29176-god-made-them-male-and-female-the-lgbt-issue-part-12
http://baptistnews.com/opinion/columns/item/29176-god-made-them-male-and-female-the-lgbt-issue-part-12We turn to the most important texts for the LGBT issue — Genesis 1-2, Matthew 19, Romans 1 — and the most significant theological issue: God’s design for sexuality in creation.

By David Gushee

Follow David: @dpgushee

There are only four passages of Scripture widely quoted on the traditionalist side that I have not yet considered: Genesis 1:26-28/2:18-25, Matthew 19:3-12 (and parallels), and Romans 1:26-27.

Despite differences in content and background, they are all (mainly) relevant to the LGBT debate in the same way: all have been read to claim the illegitimacy of same-sex relationships based on God’s original design for human sexuality in creation, often defined as male/female sexual/gender complementarity. This design renders all same-sex relations as “out of order,” that is, contrary to God’s fixed plan for creation. This is clearly the single most important biblical-theological-ethical issue faced by any Christian wrestling with the LGBT issue. It is very widely claimed on the traditionalist side. It is also received as very hurtful by gay and lesbian Christians. The issue deserves careful consideration, as far as is possible in this venue.

* * *

Finalized probably during and after the Jewish exile in Babylon (587-539 B.C.), though drawing on materials far more ancient, the function of Genesis as a whole was mainly to clarify and reinforce a distinctive and unifying Jewish origins story, theological narrative and ethical vision, drawing both on their own historic traditions and to some extent on the traditions of their neighbors. In Genesis 1-11, a primeval prehistory, the authors/editors both borrowed from and subverted their neighbors’ creation stories, while adding new elements, to paint a theological picture of creation and human origins, marriage and family life, the sources of human evil and suffering, the birth of culture, agriculture, early technology and cities, the origins of diverse peoples and languages, and the conditions existing on planet Earth prior to the call of Abraham — all framed as a story of a good creation made by God, damaged by human rebellion, subjected to God’s judgment and yet also divine redemption.

Most scholars agree that Genesis 1:1-2:4a and 2:4b-25 are two different creation accounts interwoven by an editor. Genesis 1:26-28 says humans are made in the image of God, created with “sexual difference” as male and female, and commanded (blessed) to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and “subdue” it. Genesis 2:18-25 depicts God’s recognition of the loneliness of the original man and his need for a helper/companion/partner; taken from the man’s rib, this partner is woman. The final two verses function etiologically to explain the origins of marriage, as the first man and woman are called “man” and “wife.”

So there they are, two ancient, truly lovely accounts of God’s creation of humanity and of the first couple. An extraordinarily elaborate literature in biblical studies, theology and ethics has been written based on these brief ancient accounts, related to God’s purposes in creation, what it means to be made in the image of God, what human responsibility for creation looks like, how the procreation mandate/blessing is to be understood in a world now filled with seven billion people, how intrinsically relational human beings are (“not good to be alone”), the nature of humanity’s relationship with the other creatures made by God, and the kind of relationship God intended between that original man and woman.

The fact that it is a man and a woman, and only a man and a woman, referenced in the discussions of sex and marriage in Genesis 1-2 — and the fact that only a man and a woman have been able to procreate (until reproductive technology came along) — has been pivotal in shaping traditional Christian opinion on the LGBT issue. Christian tradition has taken these texts as prescriptive for all times and all peoples pertaining to the design and purpose of sex, marriage and family life. That has excluded those who are unable to fulfill that prescription due to their sexual orientation. But increasingly today it is noted that core practices noted in Genesis 1-2, including mutual care for children, helper-partner companionship (Gen. 2:18) and total self-giving, can and do occur among covenanted gay and lesbian couples.

* * *

Jesus’ teaching on divorce as recorded in Matthew 5:31-32, 19:3-12//Mark 10:2-12 (and Luke 16:18, cf. Eph. 5:21-33) is simple in its way, but appears to have become more complex in the Gospel writers’ editing process. I have written about these texts at length elsewhere. Suffice it to say here the following: When Jesus is asked whether it is “lawful for a man to divorce his wife” [for any cause — Matt. 19:3], he leads the conversation back to Old Testament sources. “Moses” (Deut. 24:1-4) is cited but trumped by a composite Jesus offers of Genesis 1:27 and 2:24. Jesus adds his famous ruling, “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Matt. 10:6b//Mk. 10:9). Jesus then goes on to condemn (illegitimate?) divorce-initiation and remarriage as adultery.

In Matthew’s version, this then triggers a conversation with the disciples where they seem taken aback by the strictness of this teaching, such that it might be “better not to marry” (Matt. 19:10). Jesus responds by suggesting the radical new possibility in a Jewish context of becoming “eunuchs for the kingdom,” which seems to mean embracing voluntary celibacy. This passage matters quite a bit for authorizing a celibacy option in Christianity. Some Christians, including some gay Christians, read it as mandating celibacy for all gays and lesbians. Such claims carry more existential weight when they come from celibate gay Christians — as they sometimes do — than from straight Christians enjoying the pleasures of married life.

The goal of this teaching-then-text was not to address what we now call the LGBT issue, though it is sometimes cited in that debate because Jesus references Genesis 1-2. The text itself intends a stern attack on the growing tendency toward permissiveness in first-century Jewish practice, allowing men to initiate divorce from their wives for trivial reasons, leaving families shattered and women disgraced and destitute. So the purpose of his teaching was to call listeners to a much stricter understanding of the permanence of marriage, which God intended to be a lifelong one-flesh relationship for the good of adults, children and community. That teaching definitely needs to be heard in our churches today. The text’s relevance to the LGBT issue is more debated.

* * *

Scholars historically have agreed that Paul’s purpose in Romans 1-3 is to paint a theological picture of the world leading to the conclusion that every human being desperately needs the salvation offered by God through Jesus Christ. After celebrating the gospel that saves both Jew and Greek, in Romans 1:18-32 Paul points his indictment primarily toward the characteristic sins of the pagan Gentile population — at its worst, as he sees it, and for the purposes of this particular theological indictment.

Paul indicts those who quite inexcusably “suppress the truth” about God available in creation (Rom. 1:20), dishonoring God by engaging in the futile practices of idol worship. In response, the aggrieved God’s punishment is that he “gave them up” to the dishonorable/shameful lusts, impurity and degrading passions that they now desire (Rom. 1:24-26). Their consequent spiral downward into moral debasement is then illustrated by yet another vice list, indeed 22 types of vice (1:26-32) including (vv. 29-31) “every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice ... envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips,slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.”

But, fatefully, the one issue Paul singles out for more extended treatment in this passage is same-sex intercourse. Romans 1:26-27 is the most widely cited passage in the entire LGBT debate:

“For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.”

Our starting point is of course the constant citation of this verse in some Christian communities to describe contemporary gay and lesbian people as having grossly misdirected sexual passions, and to depict all same-sex acts as in the neighborhood of “unnatural,” “shameless” and punishable by God. It is a fearsome legacy, especially if one cares about the suffering of those raised in Christian homes and churches who discover a same-sex orientation.

The massive scholarly literature about this text flows in a number of directions, including what background textual or cultural influences shaped Paul’s claims here, what specific terms like “natural and unnatural” mean for him, what Paul was intending to teach in his context (exegesis), and what we are to make of it in our own time (hermeneutics and ethics).

Backgrounds: The always fair-minded William Loader suggests that Paul’s Jewish background is probably primary, including the Leviticus texts we considered earlier as well as the creation narratives. Paul may also be attempting to integrate a conservative strand of Greco-Roman intellectual and moral thinking, as in Stoicism, related to the “natural" and universal access to knowledge of the natural. And any review of what is known of Roman sexual practices and norms, including the wide acceptance of same-sex acts in various circumstances, including by married men, demonstrates their dramatic variance from traditional Jewish sexual ethics.

Loader further suggests cultural themes which might have affected Paul and would be less familiar or welcome to contemporary Christian traditionalist readers. One of these is an honor/shame concern related to men giving up their superior, active role in sex and allowing themselves to be treated like women. Another is the common association of male-male sex with humiliating, violent rape, often in war. As for women, their presumed designed/natural passivity as the recipient of male desire in sex would be shockingly overridden in volitional same-sex acts. It would be a disturbing expression of women’s agency in a patriarchal society, and thus viewed as unnatural, and certainly as a threat to male power.

Here are four approaches I have seen that raise questions about the traditional interpretation of what Paul says here:

1) By using the language of “exchanging” or giving up” “natural” for “unnatural” intercourse, Paul may be saying that he thinks those engaging in same-sex intercourse were capable of “normal,” “natural” heterosexual relations but perversely chose same-sex. Empirically speaking, this was sometimes true then, as it is now (see next paragraph). But, at the hermeneutical level, we now know that a small sexual minority is not at all capable of heterosexual attraction or relations. It does not seem that they can be fairly described as “exchanging” or “giving up” natural for unnatural sex. This raises reasonable questions about the fairness of applying this description to that part of the human community today.

2) We know that same-sex behavior in the Greco-Roman world very often, though not always (scholars differ on how to describe the balance between consensual and coercive/harmful shares of same-sex activity), looked like pederasty, prostitution and master-slave sex, and these were criticized by pagan moralists and not just Christians. These were primarily indulgences of privileged men who had the power to take and use other people's bodies for pleasure, and the luxury to spend a fair amount of time messing around with all different kinds of sex. For these men, a wife alone was not enough. They wanted novelty, excess, pleasures of ever more exotic kinds. The first-century Roman philosopher Musonius Rufus, for example, wrote: “Not the least significant part of the life of luxury and self-indulgence lies also in sexual excess ... those who lead such a life crave a variety of loves ... not women alone but also men.” Some argue that Paul is reacting to this culture of sexual excess, selfishness and sanctioned adultery in Romans 1, and that the same-sex part of the problem was incidental rather than central. This claim too is strongly disputed. Its resolution has an impact on a scholar’s sense of the relevance of this text to consensual (not to mention loving and covenantal) same-sex relationships.

3) Harvard-trained classicist Sarah Ruden, in her widely-praised book Paul Among the People, sharpens the cultural issue considerably. Quoting all kinds of sources, including bawdy popular texts as well as high poetry, she describes widespread and quite vile Greco-Roman cultural practices authorizing often violent anal rape of powerless young men, especially slaves, but really anybody of lower social status. This practice was cruelly accompanied by moral condemnation of the victims rather than the victimizers, the latter of which were often celebrated for their virility. She documents how young boys had to be very carefully protected from sexual attacks, which could happen at any time, humiliating them emotionally and perhaps destroying them physically. Ruden is convinced that this is what Paul had in mind when he thought about same-sex interest and activity, and this is why he links it to other vices of excess and debauchery in Romans 1. She claims Paul’s teachings on sexuality are in large part reflective of revulsion at this kind of cultural depravity, his desire to protect the bodies and souls of the innocent, and his commitment to discipling young Christians who would not participate in this vicious and widespread behavior. If this was his goal, no one could have a dispute with Paul. We could all agree that a culture like this is depraved.

4) Paul was writing to Roman Christians, some of whom had connections in the Roman imperial court, and all of whom would be familiar with the evil and craziness there. The violence, carousing and orgiastic sexuality of that court, including Caligula’s many depravities and Nero’s own same-sex relations, were legendary. If Paul had the imperial court in mind while painting his broad brushstrokes about the idolatrous debauchery of the Gentile world, that would mean that Romans 1:18-32 (look at that whole description again in this light) might have functioned as a highly evocative, deeply contextual, thinly veiled depiction of the Roman imperial court as a macabre worst-case symbol of Gentile depravity. This again would limit its applicability for contemporary circumstances that are far different than the Roman court.

A gently revisionist conclusion would be to suggest that Paul’s theological purpose in Romans 1, and the religious and cultural context that he swam in when he wrote it, precluded him from speaking sympathetically about any kind of same-sex relationships. The “subject” may seem to be the same, but many have argued that the context is so different that Paul’s words are of little relevance to the question of covenanted same-sex relations among devoted Christians. This would not be the only subject on which the contemporary application of Paul’s statements have been reevaluated in this way, leading to the setting aside of his implied or explicit directives (head-coverings, hair, women keeping silent in church, instructions to slaves to obey their masters).

Such a conclusion is not compelling to traditionalists, who link Paul’s teaching here to the other texts in the canon that we have explored, notably the creation/design theme, thus decontextualizing Paul’s teaching considerably and viewing it as part of a coherent overall biblical sexual ethic.

Still, stepping back, it is appropriate to wonder whether what Paul is so harshly condemning in Romans 1 has much if anything to do with that devout, loving lesbian couple who have been together 20 years and sit on the third row at church. Their lives do not at all look like the overall picture of depravity offered in Romans 1:18-32. You certainly wonder about this when you know that couple — or when you are that couple.

Next we will look much more closely at the theme of God’s design in creation and how it relates to sexual orientation.

]]>We turn to the most important texts for the LGBT issue — Genesis 1-2, Matthew 19, Romans 1 — and the most significant theological issue: God’s design for sexuality in creation.

By David Gushee

Follow David: @dpgushee

There are only four passages of Scripture widely quoted on the traditionalist side that I have not yet considered: Genesis 1:26-28/2:18-25, Matthew 19:3-12 (and parallels), and Romans 1:26-27.

Despite differences in content and background, they are all (mainly) relevant to the LGBT debate in the same way: all have been read to claim the illegitimacy of same-sex relationships based on God’s original design for human sexuality in creation, often defined as male/female sexual/gender complementarity. This design renders all same-sex relations as “out of order,” that is, contrary to God’s fixed plan for creation. This is clearly the single most important biblical-theological-ethical issue faced by any Christian wrestling with the LGBT issue. It is very widely claimed on the traditionalist side. It is also received as very hurtful by gay and lesbian Christians. The issue deserves careful consideration, as far as is possible in this venue.

* * *

Finalized probably during and after the Jewish exile in Babylon (587-539 B.C.), though drawing on materials far more ancient, the function of Genesis as a whole was mainly to clarify and reinforce a distinctive and unifying Jewish origins story, theological narrative and ethical vision, drawing both on their own historic traditions and to some extent on the traditions of their neighbors. In Genesis 1-11, a primeval prehistory, the authors/editors both borrowed from and subverted their neighbors’ creation stories, while adding new elements, to paint a theological picture of creation and human origins, marriage and family life, the sources of human evil and suffering, the birth of culture, agriculture, early technology and cities, the origins of diverse peoples and languages, and the conditions existing on planet Earth prior to the call of Abraham — all framed as a story of a good creation made by God, damaged by human rebellion, subjected to God’s judgment and yet also divine redemption.

Most scholars agree that Genesis 1:1-2:4a and 2:4b-25 are two different creation accounts interwoven by an editor. Genesis 1:26-28 says humans are made in the image of God, created with “sexual difference” as male and female, and commanded (blessed) to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and “subdue” it. Genesis 2:18-25 depicts God’s recognition of the loneliness of the original man and his need for a helper/companion/partner; taken from the man’s rib, this partner is woman. The final two verses function etiologically to explain the origins of marriage, as the first man and woman are called “man” and “wife.”

So there they are, two ancient, truly lovely accounts of God’s creation of humanity and of the first couple. An extraordinarily elaborate literature in biblical studies, theology and ethics has been written based on these brief ancient accounts, related to God’s purposes in creation, what it means to be made in the image of God, what human responsibility for creation looks like, how the procreation mandate/blessing is to be understood in a world now filled with seven billion people, how intrinsically relational human beings are (“not good to be alone”), the nature of humanity’s relationship with the other creatures made by God, and the kind of relationship God intended between that original man and woman.

The fact that it is a man and a woman, and only a man and a woman, referenced in the discussions of sex and marriage in Genesis 1-2 — and the fact that only a man and a woman have been able to procreate (until reproductive technology came along) — has been pivotal in shaping traditional Christian opinion on the LGBT issue. Christian tradition has taken these texts as prescriptive for all times and all peoples pertaining to the design and purpose of sex, marriage and family life. That has excluded those who are unable to fulfill that prescription due to their sexual orientation. But increasingly today it is noted that core practices noted in Genesis 1-2, including mutual care for children, helper-partner companionship (Gen. 2:18) and total self-giving, can and do occur among covenanted gay and lesbian couples.

* * *

Jesus’ teaching on divorce as recorded in Matthew 5:31-32, 19:3-12//Mark 10:2-12 (and Luke 16:18, cf. Eph. 5:21-33) is simple in its way, but appears to have become more complex in the Gospel writers’ editing process. I have written about these texts at length elsewhere. Suffice it to say here the following: When Jesus is asked whether it is “lawful for a man to divorce his wife” [for any cause — Matt. 19:3], he leads the conversation back to Old Testament sources. “Moses” (Deut. 24:1-4) is cited but trumped by a composite Jesus offers of Genesis 1:27 and 2:24. Jesus adds his famous ruling, “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Matt. 10:6b//Mk. 10:9). Jesus then goes on to condemn (illegitimate?) divorce-initiation and remarriage as adultery.

In Matthew’s version, this then triggers a conversation with the disciples where they seem taken aback by the strictness of this teaching, such that it might be “better not to marry” (Matt. 19:10). Jesus responds by suggesting the radical new possibility in a Jewish context of becoming “eunuchs for the kingdom,” which seems to mean embracing voluntary celibacy. This passage matters quite a bit for authorizing a celibacy option in Christianity. Some Christians, including some gay Christians, read it as mandating celibacy for all gays and lesbians. Such claims carry more existential weight when they come from celibate gay Christians — as they sometimes do — than from straight Christians enjoying the pleasures of married life.

The goal of this teaching-then-text was not to address what we now call the LGBT issue, though it is sometimes cited in that debate because Jesus references Genesis 1-2. The text itself intends a stern attack on the growing tendency toward permissiveness in first-century Jewish practice, allowing men to initiate divorce from their wives for trivial reasons, leaving families shattered and women disgraced and destitute. So the purpose of his teaching was to call listeners to a much stricter understanding of the permanence of marriage, which God intended to be a lifelong one-flesh relationship for the good of adults, children and community. That teaching definitely needs to be heard in our churches today. The text’s relevance to the LGBT issue is more debated.

* * *

Scholars historically have agreed that Paul’s purpose in Romans 1-3 is to paint a theological picture of the world leading to the conclusion that every human being desperately needs the salvation offered by God through Jesus Christ. After celebrating the gospel that saves both Jew and Greek, in Romans 1:18-32 Paul points his indictment primarily toward the characteristic sins of the pagan Gentile population — at its worst, as he sees it, and for the purposes of this particular theological indictment.

Paul indicts those who quite inexcusably “suppress the truth” about God available in creation (Rom. 1:20), dishonoring God by engaging in the futile practices of idol worship. In response, the aggrieved God’s punishment is that he “gave them up” to the dishonorable/shameful lusts, impurity and degrading passions that they now desire (Rom. 1:24-26). Their consequent spiral downward into moral debasement is then illustrated by yet another vice list, indeed 22 types of vice (1:26-32) including (vv. 29-31) “every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice ... envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips,slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.”

But, fatefully, the one issue Paul singles out for more extended treatment in this passage is same-sex intercourse. Romans 1:26-27 is the most widely cited passage in the entire LGBT debate:

“For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.”

Our starting point is of course the constant citation of this verse in some Christian communities to describe contemporary gay and lesbian people as having grossly misdirected sexual passions, and to depict all same-sex acts as in the neighborhood of “unnatural,” “shameless” and punishable by God. It is a fearsome legacy, especially if one cares about the suffering of those raised in Christian homes and churches who discover a same-sex orientation.

The massive scholarly literature about this text flows in a number of directions, including what background textual or cultural influences shaped Paul’s claims here, what specific terms like “natural and unnatural” mean for him, what Paul was intending to teach in his context (exegesis), and what we are to make of it in our own time (hermeneutics and ethics).

Backgrounds: The always fair-minded William Loader suggests that Paul’s Jewish background is probably primary, including the Leviticus texts we considered earlier as well as the creation narratives. Paul may also be attempting to integrate a conservative strand of Greco-Roman intellectual and moral thinking, as in Stoicism, related to the “natural" and universal access to knowledge of the natural. And any review of what is known of Roman sexual practices and norms, including the wide acceptance of same-sex acts in various circumstances, including by married men, demonstrates their dramatic variance from traditional Jewish sexual ethics.

Loader further suggests cultural themes which might have affected Paul and would be less familiar or welcome to contemporary Christian traditionalist readers. One of these is an honor/shame concern related to men giving up their superior, active role in sex and allowing themselves to be treated like women. Another is the common association of male-male sex with humiliating, violent rape, often in war. As for women, their presumed designed/natural passivity as the recipient of male desire in sex would be shockingly overridden in volitional same-sex acts. It would be a disturbing expression of women’s agency in a patriarchal society, and thus viewed as unnatural, and certainly as a threat to male power.

Here are four approaches I have seen that raise questions about the traditional interpretation of what Paul says here:

1) By using the language of “exchanging” or giving up” “natural” for “unnatural” intercourse, Paul may be saying that he thinks those engaging in same-sex intercourse were capable of “normal,” “natural” heterosexual relations but perversely chose same-sex. Empirically speaking, this was sometimes true then, as it is now (see next paragraph). But, at the hermeneutical level, we now know that a small sexual minority is not at all capable of heterosexual attraction or relations. It does not seem that they can be fairly described as “exchanging” or “giving up” natural for unnatural sex. This raises reasonable questions about the fairness of applying this description to that part of the human community today.

2) We know that same-sex behavior in the Greco-Roman world very often, though not always (scholars differ on how to describe the balance between consensual and coercive/harmful shares of same-sex activity), looked like pederasty, prostitution and master-slave sex, and these were criticized by pagan moralists and not just Christians. These were primarily indulgences of privileged men who had the power to take and use other people's bodies for pleasure, and the luxury to spend a fair amount of time messing around with all different kinds of sex. For these men, a wife alone was not enough. They wanted novelty, excess, pleasures of ever more exotic kinds. The first-century Roman philosopher Musonius Rufus, for example, wrote: “Not the least significant part of the life of luxury and self-indulgence lies also in sexual excess ... those who lead such a life crave a variety of loves ... not women alone but also men.” Some argue that Paul is reacting to this culture of sexual excess, selfishness and sanctioned adultery in Romans 1, and that the same-sex part of the problem was incidental rather than central. This claim too is strongly disputed. Its resolution has an impact on a scholar’s sense of the relevance of this text to consensual (not to mention loving and covenantal) same-sex relationships.

3) Harvard-trained classicist Sarah Ruden, in her widely-praised book Paul Among the People, sharpens the cultural issue considerably. Quoting all kinds of sources, including bawdy popular texts as well as high poetry, she describes widespread and quite vile Greco-Roman cultural practices authorizing often violent anal rape of powerless young men, especially slaves, but really anybody of lower social status. This practice was cruelly accompanied by moral condemnation of the victims rather than the victimizers, the latter of which were often celebrated for their virility. She documents how young boys had to be very carefully protected from sexual attacks, which could happen at any time, humiliating them emotionally and perhaps destroying them physically. Ruden is convinced that this is what Paul had in mind when he thought about same-sex interest and activity, and this is why he links it to other vices of excess and debauchery in Romans 1. She claims Paul’s teachings on sexuality are in large part reflective of revulsion at this kind of cultural depravity, his desire to protect the bodies and souls of the innocent, and his commitment to discipling young Christians who would not participate in this vicious and widespread behavior. If this was his goal, no one could have a dispute with Paul. We could all agree that a culture like this is depraved.

4) Paul was writing to Roman Christians, some of whom had connections in the Roman imperial court, and all of whom would be familiar with the evil and craziness there. The violence, carousing and orgiastic sexuality of that court, including Caligula’s many depravities and Nero’s own same-sex relations, were legendary. If Paul had the imperial court in mind while painting his broad brushstrokes about the idolatrous debauchery of the Gentile world, that would mean that Romans 1:18-32 (look at that whole description again in this light) might have functioned as a highly evocative, deeply contextual, thinly veiled depiction of the Roman imperial court as a macabre worst-case symbol of Gentile depravity. This again would limit its applicability for contemporary circumstances that are far different than the Roman court.

A gently revisionist conclusion would be to suggest that Paul’s theological purpose in Romans 1, and the religious and cultural context that he swam in when he wrote it, precluded him from speaking sympathetically about any kind of same-sex relationships. The “subject” may seem to be the same, but many have argued that the context is so different that Paul’s words are of little relevance to the question of covenanted same-sex relations among devoted Christians. This would not be the only subject on which the contemporary application of Paul’s statements have been reevaluated in this way, leading to the setting aside of his implied or explicit directives (head-coverings, hair, women keeping silent in church, instructions to slaves to obey their masters).

Such a conclusion is not compelling to traditionalists, who link Paul’s teaching here to the other texts in the canon that we have explored, notably the creation/design theme, thus decontextualizing Paul’s teaching considerably and viewing it as part of a coherent overall biblical sexual ethic.

Still, stepping back, it is appropriate to wonder whether what Paul is so harshly condemning in Romans 1 has much if anything to do with that devout, loving lesbian couple who have been together 20 years and sit on the third row at church. Their lives do not at all look like the overall picture of depravity offered in Romans 1:18-32. You certainly wonder about this when you know that couple — or when you are that couple.

Next we will look much more closely at the theme of God’s design in creation and how it relates to sexual orientation.

In 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10, Paul (in the second case, probably a pseudonymous “Paul”) deploys two “vice lists” — a common enough rhetorical strategy in the Greco-Roman world — to communicate to his readers condemnation of sinful behavior. With regard to 1 Corinthians, most scholars agree that Paul is dealing with an especially unruly congregation, some of whom have fallen prey to moral laxity, including in sexuality. Paul writes to correct that, and to make it perfectly clear that the salvation offered by grace does not also offer an exemption from basic moral requirements. Then follow 10 types of people who, Paul warns, will not “inherit the kingdom of God.” In 1 Timothy 1, the context for the vice list is more obscure. It falls under a discussion of “the law,” and the author’s concern about false teachers apparently focusing overmuch on the law. Paul says that the law is mainly intended for the godless. Then follow seven examples of such godlessness.

In both vice lists the Greek word arsenokoitai is used. In the first list, the word malakoi is directly in front of it. A vast, highly contested scholarly literature exists to parse out the meaning of these two odd little words.

Consider malakoi. This is a Greek word whose English translations range wildly from “weakling” to “wanton” to “debauchers” to “licentious” to “sensual” to “effeminate” to “male prostitutes” to a composite of malakoi + arsenokoitai translating them together as “men who have sex with men” or “homosexuals.” The word literally means “soft” and is used elsewhere in the New Testament only to describe the “soft” or “fine” clothing worn by those who are rich (Matt. 11:8/Luke 7:25).

William Loader says the word does basically mean “soft,” and if applied to a man would be a pejorative attack on his masculinity. Dale Martin finds that the meaning could be extended to mock men who allowed themselves to be treated like women sexually; e.g, to be penetrated, though a wide variety of other terms were more commonly used for this, leading him to doubt whether that meaning should be assumed in this case. He instead focuses on a broader semantic range related to “soft,” such as self-indulgent, sexually undisciplined, luxurious living. On the other end of the spectrum, Robert Gagnon reads the term to apply precisely to the passive partner in male same-sex relations (penetrated men), and not just to “male prostitutes,” the translation offered in the New International Version. But William Loader again points out that if Paul wanted to say precisely that he had other terms available to him.

Clear yet?

As for arsenokoitai, the only two times the word appears in the New Testament are found in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10, and most scholars believe Paul coined the phrase. It appears only very rarely in ancient Greek writings after Paul, mostly also in vice lists. The word arsenokoitai (plural for arsenokoites) is a composite word, made up from two previously existing words that do not seem to have been put together before in Greek literature.

A significant number of scholars, such as Richard Hays, think Paul is not being altogether original, but instead alluding here to the Septuagint (Greek) translation of the Hebrew Bible’s Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. Or perhaps, suggests Anthony Thiselton, if Paul is not directly alluding to those texts, he is at least pointing to traditional Jewish sexual ethics — which he wanted now to teach as Christian sexual ethics.

In the Septuagint, both Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 contain the terms arsenos and koiten; Leviticus 20:13 is more important here because it puts the terms directly together. Many scholars find that linguistic parallel or connection conclusive evidence as to Paul’s source and meaning, even though there is no evidence it had ever been done before.

As Marti Nissinen summarizes the overall scholarly conversation: “These attempts…show how difficult it really is to determine the actual meaning of this word in different contexts.”

But because there is an English-language Christian community, the Greek New Testament does indeed need to get translated into English, and translators have to come up with some kind of word to translate arsenokoitai.

Here are examples of how the word arsenokoitai has been translated into English over 425 years, with appreciation to Matthew Vines for this compilation:

• Geneva Bible (1587): “buggerers”

• King James Bible (1607): “abusers of themselves with mankind”

• Mace New Testament (1729): “the brutal”

• Wesley’s New Testament (1755): “sodomites”

• Douay-Rheims (1899): “liers with mankind”

• Revised Standard Version (1946): “homosexuals”

• Phillips Bible (1958): “pervert”

• Today’s English Version (1966): “homosexual perverts”

• New International Version (1973): “homosexual offenders”

• New American Bible (1987): “practicing homosexuals”

Working from most English interpretations/translations of a Pauline neologism, most English-reading Christians and most English-speaking preachers have naturally concluded that Paul is condemning either/both all “homosexual” people or all people who perform same-sex acts. (Sometimes in harshly derogatory terms, such as in the unforgivable TEV and Phillips translations.) Some have also concluded from 1 Corinthians 6:9 that all such people are simply excluded from heaven; e.g., heading straight to hell. This despite other New Testament texts related to the criteria for eternal life, such as those emphasizing God’s grace for forgiven but imperfect sinners who believe (consider John 3:16). And few who cite 1 Corinthians 6:9 to say that “practicing” gays are going to hell also say that “practicing” greedy people or drunkards are going to hell.

Most English-speaking Christians would have no idea that the Greek word being translated was a new word that Paul coined whose meaning and translation are contested.

They would not know of the intense debate among classics scholars and New Testament interpreters as to what Paul was thinking about when he was (apparently or clearly) talking about same-sex activity in the Greco-Roman world. Consensual adult sex? Man-boy sex/abuse? Prostitution? Rape? Abuse of slaves? They would not, for example, have read biblical scholar Michael Vasey's observation that in imperial Rome same-sex activity was “strongly associated with idolatry, slavery, and social dominance ... often the assertion of the strong over the bodies of the weak.” Is that what we think today when we hear the term “homosexual”?

They would not know of the claim of New Testament scholar Dale Martin that of the few uses of the term arsenokoites in Greek literature outside of the New Testament, in four instances it concerned economic exploitation and abuses of power, not same-sex behavior; or more precisely, perhaps, economic exploitation and violence in the sex business, as in pimping and forced prostitution. (Check the Sibylline Oracles, Acts of John, and To Autolychus.)

But then neither would they know that William Loader’s magisterial study says it is probably better to take the term as having a broader range than that.

But what then to make of New Testament scholar James Brownson’s attention to the fact that the vice list over in 1 Timothy 1:10 “includes three interrelated terms in reference to male-male erotic activity”? He puts them together to suggest that the list is collectively referring to “kidnappers or slave dealers (andropodistai) acting as ‘pimps’ for their captured and castrated boys (the pornoi, or male prostitutes) servicing the arsenokoitai, the men who make use of these boy prostitutes.”

Clear yet?

How might the history of Christian treatment of gays and lesbians have been different if arsenokoitai had been translated “sex traffickers” or “sexual exploiters” or "rapists" or "sexual predators" or “pimps”? Such translations are plausible, even if not the majority scholarly reconstruction at this time. And they are at least as adequate, or inadequate, as “homosexual,” a term from our culture with a range of meanings including sexual orientation, identity, and activity, and not a word from Paul’s world.

It might have been nice if in our English Bibles the genuine uncertainty about how to translate Paul's neologism arsenokoitai, or the two words malakoi and arsenokoitai together, at least had been mentioned in a footnote.

But alas — most of the translations we got read as if every "homosexual" person was being condemned — to eternal fire. This overly confident translation decision then shadowed the lives of all LGBT people, most sadly gay and lesbian adolescents rejected by their mothers and fathers (and pastors and youth ministers) as hell-bound perverts.

Very high-level scholarly uncertainty about the meaning and translation of these two Greek words, exacerbated by profound cultural and linguistic differences between what we (think we) know about Paul's world and what we do know about our own, undermines claims to the conclusiveness of malakoi and arsenokoitai for resolving the LGBT issue.

I deeply lament the damage done by certain questionable and sometimes crudely derogatory Bible translations in the lives of vulnerable people made in God's image.

]]>A rewriting of the substance of Tuesday's column on the interpretation of 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10, with gratitude to readers for helpful feedback.

By David Gushee

Follow David: @dpgushee

In 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10, Paul (in the second case, probably a pseudonymous “Paul”) deploys two “vice lists” — a common enough rhetorical strategy in the Greco-Roman world — to communicate to his readers condemnation of sinful behavior. With regard to 1 Corinthians, most scholars agree that Paul is dealing with an especially unruly congregation, some of whom have fallen prey to moral laxity, including in sexuality. Paul writes to correct that, and to make it perfectly clear that the salvation offered by grace does not also offer an exemption from basic moral requirements. Then follow 10 types of people who, Paul warns, will not “inherit the kingdom of God.” In 1 Timothy 1, the context for the vice list is more obscure. It falls under a discussion of “the law,” and the author’s concern about false teachers apparently focusing overmuch on the law. Paul says that the law is mainly intended for the godless. Then follow seven examples of such godlessness.

In both vice lists the Greek word arsenokoitai is used. In the first list, the word malakoi is directly in front of it. A vast, highly contested scholarly literature exists to parse out the meaning of these two odd little words.

Consider malakoi. This is a Greek word whose English translations range wildly from “weakling” to “wanton” to “debauchers” to “licentious” to “sensual” to “effeminate” to “male prostitutes” to a composite of malakoi + arsenokoitai translating them together as “men who have sex with men” or “homosexuals.” The word literally means “soft” and is used elsewhere in the New Testament only to describe the “soft” or “fine” clothing worn by those who are rich (Matt. 11:8/Luke 7:25).

William Loader says the word does basically mean “soft,” and if applied to a man would be a pejorative attack on his masculinity. Dale Martin finds that the meaning could be extended to mock men who allowed themselves to be treated like women sexually; e.g, to be penetrated, though a wide variety of other terms were more commonly used for this, leading him to doubt whether that meaning should be assumed in this case. He instead focuses on a broader semantic range related to “soft,” such as self-indulgent, sexually undisciplined, luxurious living. On the other end of the spectrum, Robert Gagnon reads the term to apply precisely to the passive partner in male same-sex relations (penetrated men), and not just to “male prostitutes,” the translation offered in the New International Version. But William Loader again points out that if Paul wanted to say precisely that he had other terms available to him.

Clear yet?

As for arsenokoitai, the only two times the word appears in the New Testament are found in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10, and most scholars believe Paul coined the phrase. It appears only very rarely in ancient Greek writings after Paul, mostly also in vice lists. The word arsenokoitai (plural for arsenokoites) is a composite word, made up from two previously existing words that do not seem to have been put together before in Greek literature.

A significant number of scholars, such as Richard Hays, think Paul is not being altogether original, but instead alluding here to the Septuagint (Greek) translation of the Hebrew Bible’s Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. Or perhaps, suggests Anthony Thiselton, if Paul is not directly alluding to those texts, he is at least pointing to traditional Jewish sexual ethics — which he wanted now to teach as Christian sexual ethics.

In the Septuagint, both Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 contain the terms arsenos and koiten; Leviticus 20:13 is more important here because it puts the terms directly together. Many scholars find that linguistic parallel or connection conclusive evidence as to Paul’s source and meaning, even though there is no evidence it had ever been done before.

As Marti Nissinen summarizes the overall scholarly conversation: “These attempts…show how difficult it really is to determine the actual meaning of this word in different contexts.”

But because there is an English-language Christian community, the Greek New Testament does indeed need to get translated into English, and translators have to come up with some kind of word to translate arsenokoitai.

Here are examples of how the word arsenokoitai has been translated into English over 425 years, with appreciation to Matthew Vines for this compilation:

• Geneva Bible (1587): “buggerers”

• King James Bible (1607): “abusers of themselves with mankind”

• Mace New Testament (1729): “the brutal”

• Wesley’s New Testament (1755): “sodomites”

• Douay-Rheims (1899): “liers with mankind”

• Revised Standard Version (1946): “homosexuals”

• Phillips Bible (1958): “pervert”

• Today’s English Version (1966): “homosexual perverts”

• New International Version (1973): “homosexual offenders”

• New American Bible (1987): “practicing homosexuals”

Working from most English interpretations/translations of a Pauline neologism, most English-reading Christians and most English-speaking preachers have naturally concluded that Paul is condemning either/both all “homosexual” people or all people who perform same-sex acts. (Sometimes in harshly derogatory terms, such as in the unforgivable TEV and Phillips translations.) Some have also concluded from 1 Corinthians 6:9 that all such people are simply excluded from heaven; e.g., heading straight to hell. This despite other New Testament texts related to the criteria for eternal life, such as those emphasizing God’s grace for forgiven but imperfect sinners who believe (consider John 3:16). And few who cite 1 Corinthians 6:9 to say that “practicing” gays are going to hell also say that “practicing” greedy people or drunkards are going to hell.

Most English-speaking Christians would have no idea that the Greek word being translated was a new word that Paul coined whose meaning and translation are contested.

They would not know of the intense debate among classics scholars and New Testament interpreters as to what Paul was thinking about when he was (apparently or clearly) talking about same-sex activity in the Greco-Roman world. Consensual adult sex? Man-boy sex/abuse? Prostitution? Rape? Abuse of slaves? They would not, for example, have read biblical scholar Michael Vasey's observation that in imperial Rome same-sex activity was “strongly associated with idolatry, slavery, and social dominance ... often the assertion of the strong over the bodies of the weak.” Is that what we think today when we hear the term “homosexual”?

They would not know of the claim of New Testament scholar Dale Martin that of the few uses of the term arsenokoites in Greek literature outside of the New Testament, in four instances it concerned economic exploitation and abuses of power, not same-sex behavior; or more precisely, perhaps, economic exploitation and violence in the sex business, as in pimping and forced prostitution. (Check the Sibylline Oracles, Acts of John, and To Autolychus.)

But then neither would they know that William Loader’s magisterial study says it is probably better to take the term as having a broader range than that.

But what then to make of New Testament scholar James Brownson’s attention to the fact that the vice list over in 1 Timothy 1:10 “includes three interrelated terms in reference to male-male erotic activity”? He puts them together to suggest that the list is collectively referring to “kidnappers or slave dealers (andropodistai) acting as ‘pimps’ for their captured and castrated boys (the pornoi, or male prostitutes) servicing the arsenokoitai, the men who make use of these boy prostitutes.”

Clear yet?

How might the history of Christian treatment of gays and lesbians have been different if arsenokoitai had been translated “sex traffickers” or “sexual exploiters” or "rapists" or "sexual predators" or “pimps”? Such translations are plausible, even if not the majority scholarly reconstruction at this time. And they are at least as adequate, or inadequate, as “homosexual,” a term from our culture with a range of meanings including sexual orientation, identity, and activity, and not a word from Paul’s world.

It might have been nice if in our English Bibles the genuine uncertainty about how to translate Paul's neologism arsenokoitai, or the two words malakoi and arsenokoitai together, at least had been mentioned in a footnote.

But alas — most of the translations we got read as if every "homosexual" person was being condemned — to eternal fire. This overly confident translation decision then shadowed the lives of all LGBT people, most sadly gay and lesbian adolescents rejected by their mothers and fathers (and pastors and youth ministers) as hell-bound perverts.

Very high-level scholarly uncertainty about the meaning and translation of these two Greek words, exacerbated by profound cultural and linguistic differences between what we (think we) know about Paul's world and what we do know about our own, undermines claims to the conclusiveness of malakoi and arsenokoitai for resolving the LGBT issue.

I deeply lament the damage done by certain questionable and sometimes crudely derogatory Bible translations in the lives of vulnerable people made in God's image.

A former Southern Baptist youth minister arrested Aug. 20 in Texas on a warrant has returned to Alabama to face charges of sexual abuse.

Charles “Kyle” Adcock, 31, appeared Sept. 12 in Colbert County District Court in Tuscumbia, Ala. He waived extradition from Frisco, Texas, and was transferred to Alabama on Wednesday, according to local media.

Adcock is charged with 22 counts of second-degree rape and nine counts of second-degree sodomy stemming from his time as youth minister at Woodward Avenue Baptist Church in Muscle Shoals, Ala.

Police say Adcock had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a girl in the church youth group between 2010 and 2012 beginning when she was 14. The alleged victim, now an adult, claims the incidents occurred at the church, Adcock’s home and a third location.

According to media reports, Adcock remains in jail on $500,000 bond. Both second-degree rape — which includes having sexual intercourse with a minor younger than 16 — and second-degree sodomy are Class B felonies, punishable by two-to-20 years in prison.

Adcock left Woodward Avenue Baptist Church before any of the current staff arrived. He worked as a financial adviser in Arkansas before recently moving to Texas. He is a graduate of Dallas Baptist University.

]]>Kyle Adcock, former youth minister at Woodward Avenue Baptist Church in Muscle Shoals, Ala., appeared in court Friday to face multiple charges of sexual abuse of minor.

By Bob Allen

A former Southern Baptist youth minister arrested Aug. 20 in Texas on a warrant has returned to Alabama to face charges of sexual abuse.

Charles “Kyle” Adcock, 31, appeared Sept. 12 in Colbert County District Court in Tuscumbia, Ala. He waived extradition from Frisco, Texas, and was transferred to Alabama on Wednesday, according to local media.

Adcock is charged with 22 counts of second-degree rape and nine counts of second-degree sodomy stemming from his time as youth minister at Woodward Avenue Baptist Church in Muscle Shoals, Ala.

Police say Adcock had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a girl in the church youth group between 2010 and 2012 beginning when she was 14. The alleged victim, now an adult, claims the incidents occurred at the church, Adcock’s home and a third location.

According to media reports, Adcock remains in jail on $500,000 bond. Both second-degree rape — which includes having sexual intercourse with a minor younger than 16 — and second-degree sodomy are Class B felonies, punishable by two-to-20 years in prison.

Adcock left Woodward Avenue Baptist Church before any of the current staff arrived. He worked as a financial adviser in Arkansas before recently moving to Texas. He is a graduate of Dallas Baptist University.

]]>Bob AllenSocial IssuesWed, 17 Sep 2014 09:22:32 -0400Church seeks dismissal in abuse lawsuithttp://baptistnews.com/culture/social-issues/item/29222-church-seeks-dismissal-in-abuse-lawsuit
http://baptistnews.com/culture/social-issues/item/29222-church-seeks-dismissal-in-abuse-lawsuitA Southern Baptist church in Alabama says it cannot be held legally responsible for actions by a former employee that could not have been foreseen.

By Bob Allen

A Southern Baptist church in Alabama asked a federal judge Sept. 9 to dismiss a lawsuit alleging liability for child sex crimes committed by a former minister.

Highland Park Baptist Church in Muscle Shoals, Ala., filed a motion in U.S. District Court seeking dismissal from a lawsuit filed July 22 by an alleged victim of Jeffery Dale Eddie. Eddie, the church’s former longtime associate pastor for children and church administration, is serving 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to criminal charges in March.

The complaint makes several claims against Eddie but only two against the congregation: negligence in supervision, training and hiring and respondeat superior. The second — Latin for "let the master answer" — is a legal doctrine that holds an employer legally responsible for the wrongful acts of an employee or agent that occur “within the scope” of employment.

While “sympathetic” for the plaintiff identified only by initials J.G., the motion to dismiss argues that the church is not legally responsible. While “horrific” and “depraved,” alleged acts by Eddie were “a gross deviation” from his job duties and done not to further interests of his employer but for “his own sick and twisted personal motives and for his own depraved gratification.”

The lawsuit also alleges negligent supervision, training and hiring, claiming church leaders either knew or should have known about Eddie’s proclivity to abuse children, adding that he would have not had an opportunity to harm the victim without his church position.

The defense motion says case law — including a 1996 Alabama Supreme Court ruling absolving Samford University in the wrongful death of a student murdered by his debate coach in 1989 — holds that an employer cannot be held responsible for acts committed by an employee that could not have been anticipated or foreseen.

The plaintiff has until Sept. 24 to file a response. Both the motion to dismiss and another to postpone discovery are scheduled for hearing at 2 p.m., Oct. 17, at the Hugo L. Black United States Courthouse in Birmingham.

]]>A Southern Baptist church in Alabama says it cannot be held legally responsible for actions by a former employee that could not have been foreseen.

By Bob Allen

A Southern Baptist church in Alabama asked a federal judge Sept. 9 to dismiss a lawsuit alleging liability for child sex crimes committed by a former minister.

Highland Park Baptist Church in Muscle Shoals, Ala., filed a motion in U.S. District Court seeking dismissal from a lawsuit filed July 22 by an alleged victim of Jeffery Dale Eddie. Eddie, the church’s former longtime associate pastor for children and church administration, is serving 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to criminal charges in March.

The complaint makes several claims against Eddie but only two against the congregation: negligence in supervision, training and hiring and respondeat superior. The second — Latin for "let the master answer" — is a legal doctrine that holds an employer legally responsible for the wrongful acts of an employee or agent that occur “within the scope” of employment.

While “sympathetic” for the plaintiff identified only by initials J.G., the motion to dismiss argues that the church is not legally responsible. While “horrific” and “depraved,” alleged acts by Eddie were “a gross deviation” from his job duties and done not to further interests of his employer but for “his own sick and twisted personal motives and for his own depraved gratification.”

The lawsuit also alleges negligent supervision, training and hiring, claiming church leaders either knew or should have known about Eddie’s proclivity to abuse children, adding that he would have not had an opportunity to harm the victim without his church position.

The defense motion says case law — including a 1996 Alabama Supreme Court ruling absolving Samford University in the wrongful death of a student murdered by his debate coach in 1989 — holds that an employer cannot be held responsible for acts committed by an employee that could not have been anticipated or foreseen.

The plaintiff has until Sept. 24 to file a response. Both the motion to dismiss and another to postpone discovery are scheduled for hearing at 2 p.m., Oct. 17, at the Hugo L. Black United States Courthouse in Birmingham.

Traditionalist Christians on the LGBT issue argue that there can be no legitimate same-sex relationships because they are banned by the Bible. Thus even where traditionalists acknowledge the existence of enduring same-sex orientation, they enjoin lifetime celibacy for gay and lesbian Christians. Revisionist Christians who adhere otherwise to a traditionalist sexual ethic suggest that a covenantal, monogamous same-sex relationship should be considered permissible for gay Christians.

I said last week that the traditionalist position is grounded in a pattern of connecting the biblical dots that looks like this:

In the next several weeks I want to look at the most important issues raised by examining these texts, and especially consider the relative merits of traditionalist and alternative interpretations.

Let’s begin by tackling the Genesis 19/Judges 19 pair, and related echoes in Scripture. The two stories are remarkably similar. Both involve gangs of men wanting to violate visitors being sheltered in a local household in accord with ancient Near Eastern hospitality standards. Both involve the offer of women as an alternative to the baying crowds. In Genesis 19 the women (daughters) are refused, while in Judges 19 the woman (a concubine, who is also a guest, but not protected) is accepted by the gang, tortured and raped either to death or near to death, and then dismembered later by her own master. According to Gerhard von Rad these texts probably have at least a “distant dependence” on each other. Both are “texts of terror,” as Phyllis Trible so devastatingly called them, among the most disturbing in Scripture.

I will focus on the Sodom and Gomorrah story because of its far greater impact in the rest of Scripture and Christian tradition and its role in the LGBT discussion.

The broader outlines of the story are familiar to most readers of Scripture. It stretches at least from Genesis 18:16-19:38, though the first references to Sodom and Gomorrah begin in 13:10. Historical-critical biblical scholars are convinced that several narrative strands are edited together here. As the text stands in final form it is in part an etiological story meant to explain the catastrophe that wiped out the cities that once existed on the plain near the Dead Sea (cf. 19:24-25). In part it’s a story about the contrast between the character of a holy God and wayward humanity at its worst. Its most interesting dimension, as Walter Brueggemann emphasizes in his commentary on Genesis, is in the revelatory power of the story of Abraham negotiating with God to save these cities from destruction. Here we see the extraordinary role that Abraham is beginning to play as covenant and dialogue partner with God, embodiment of justice and righteousness, and bearer of blessing to humanity. There are notes of grace here that point to Jesus and the gospel.

Abraham is famous in this story for negotiating with God to prevent divine judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. If only 50/40/30/20/10 righteous people are found in these wicked cities, will not the God of justice spare the city? (18:22-33). God repeatedly says yes. Divine retribution on the many will be prevented due to the righteousness of the few.

But when they get to Sodom the two emissary-angels do not find even 10 righteous. Abraham’s nephew Lot, who lives in Sodom, offers exemplary hospitality to the two “men.” But late at night “the men of the city” surround and attack Lot’s house en masse. They want to “know” the visitors whom Lot is sheltering. Lot refuses, leaving the safety of his house to beg the crowd to relent, and even offering his virgin daughters to appease the crowd. But the men refuse, saying, “Stand back! This fellow came here as an alien, and he would play the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them” (Gen. 19:9). Their attack is repelled only with miraculous angelic help. Sodom and Gomorrah are incinerated the next day, after Lot’s family is led away by the angels to safety.

It was once common to interpret this story as a clear indictment on “homosexuality.” Fatefully, of course, the term “sodomy” comes from this story (a term introduced in the 11th century, according to Mark Jordan). The cultural impact of both the story and the term have been enormous. But now few serious biblical interpreters think this story is about “homosexuality” at all. It has certainly receded in the traditionalist argument.

We know before chapter 19 starts that Sodom and Gomorrah are legendarily sinful towns, though we don’t know why. But after the harrowing attack on Lot and his visitors the reader now knows quite a bit about the nature of that sinfulness. This is a horrifying tale about the attempted gang rape of strangers, the shocking violation of Israelite and ancient Near Eastern standards of hospitality, Lot’s willingness to sacrifice his own daughters to the crowd, and the depravity of an entire city — all exacerbated by the fact that the intended targets happen to be angelic emissaries of a holy God. The story is filled with violence and the threat of harm. Notice that when Lot protects his guests, his “brothers” expand their threat to Lot himself: “We will deal worse with you than with them.” The parallel story in Judges makes absolutely clear that it was violence the men wanted, including sexual violence, and violence they inflicted (cf. Judg. 20:5).

Sodom and Gomorrah, their sin and God’s punishment, became resonant symbols. When cited within the rest of Scripture, even the names of these towns become a byword for total human evil and devastating divine judgment (Dt. 29:23, 32:32; Isa. 1:9f., 3:9, 13:19; Jer. 23:14, 49:18, 50:40; Lam 4:6; Ezek. 16:46-50; Amos 4:11; Zeph. 2:9; Mt. 10:15/Lk 10:10-12, Rom. 9:29, 2 Peter 2:6-10, Jude 6-7; cf. Ps. 11:6). The starkest way to warn Israel or the Church of impending judgment was to drop in a Sodom reference. But never once in these intra-biblical Sodom references is their evil described as same-sex interest or behavior. In Isaiah 1:9-23 a host of sins are named but mainly related to abuses of public justice. In Jeremiah 23:14 it’s adultery, lying and unwillingness to repent. Ezekiel 16:49 describes their sins as pride, excess food, prosperous ease and lack of care for the poor. In Amos and Zephaniah the issues are pride, mocking and oppressing the poor. Intertestamental works Sirach (16:8), 3 Maccabees (2:5) and Wisdom (19:15) still talk about Sodom and Gomorrah, and still don’t connect their sin to sexuality at all.

The only biblical references to Sodom with any possible suggestion of same-sex behavior are Jude 6-8 and the parallel text in 2 Peter 2:6-7, with their references to unholy interest in “other flesh” (Jude 7). In the context of an interpretation of Genesis 19 that was already convinced the story is about same-sex behavior, these two late New Testament texts were read as confirmation. But look closely. They represent fragments of tradition referring to unholy human interest in sex with angels, a theme derived from the book of Enoch, with reference back to the mysterious Genesis 6 story about the Nephilim.

The most illuminating comparison to the Sodom and Gomorrah story is to wartime or prison rape. Think about how one of the first images that comes to mind when thinking about prisons is the fear of getting raped there.

The men of Sodom want gang rape. They are more interested in men than in Lot’s daughters because (as Matthew Vines has pointed out) in a patriarchal society men held greater honor, and thus their violation was viewed as a greater offense than violating a woman. I would also suggest that the men wanted to dominate, humiliate and harm the male visitors precisely by treating them like defenseless women. In sexist social systems, the most outrageous thing you can do to a man is to treat him like a woman. The Sodom story is about the attempted gang rape of men, because they are strangers, because they are vulnerable and because they are a juicy target for humiliation and violation. It is about a town that had sunk to the level of the most depraved battlefield or prison.

Genesis 19 and Judges 19 are narratives with huge implications for the ethics of war, prison, gender, violence and rape. But they have nothing to do with the morality of loving, covenantal same-sex relationships.

]]>An interpretation of the Sodom (and Gibeah) stories, so fatefully destructive in forming historic Christian attitudes on the LGBT issue.

By David Gushee

Follow David: @dpgushee

Traditionalist Christians on the LGBT issue argue that there can be no legitimate same-sex relationships because they are banned by the Bible. Thus even where traditionalists acknowledge the existence of enduring same-sex orientation, they enjoin lifetime celibacy for gay and lesbian Christians. Revisionist Christians who adhere otherwise to a traditionalist sexual ethic suggest that a covenantal, monogamous same-sex relationship should be considered permissible for gay Christians.

I said last week that the traditionalist position is grounded in a pattern of connecting the biblical dots that looks like this:

In the next several weeks I want to look at the most important issues raised by examining these texts, and especially consider the relative merits of traditionalist and alternative interpretations.

Let’s begin by tackling the Genesis 19/Judges 19 pair, and related echoes in Scripture. The two stories are remarkably similar. Both involve gangs of men wanting to violate visitors being sheltered in a local household in accord with ancient Near Eastern hospitality standards. Both involve the offer of women as an alternative to the baying crowds. In Genesis 19 the women (daughters) are refused, while in Judges 19 the woman (a concubine, who is also a guest, but not protected) is accepted by the gang, tortured and raped either to death or near to death, and then dismembered later by her own master. According to Gerhard von Rad these texts probably have at least a “distant dependence” on each other. Both are “texts of terror,” as Phyllis Trible so devastatingly called them, among the most disturbing in Scripture.

I will focus on the Sodom and Gomorrah story because of its far greater impact in the rest of Scripture and Christian tradition and its role in the LGBT discussion.

The broader outlines of the story are familiar to most readers of Scripture. It stretches at least from Genesis 18:16-19:38, though the first references to Sodom and Gomorrah begin in 13:10. Historical-critical biblical scholars are convinced that several narrative strands are edited together here. As the text stands in final form it is in part an etiological story meant to explain the catastrophe that wiped out the cities that once existed on the plain near the Dead Sea (cf. 19:24-25). In part it’s a story about the contrast between the character of a holy God and wayward humanity at its worst. Its most interesting dimension, as Walter Brueggemann emphasizes in his commentary on Genesis, is in the revelatory power of the story of Abraham negotiating with God to save these cities from destruction. Here we see the extraordinary role that Abraham is beginning to play as covenant and dialogue partner with God, embodiment of justice and righteousness, and bearer of blessing to humanity. There are notes of grace here that point to Jesus and the gospel.

Abraham is famous in this story for negotiating with God to prevent divine judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. If only 50/40/30/20/10 righteous people are found in these wicked cities, will not the God of justice spare the city? (18:22-33). God repeatedly says yes. Divine retribution on the many will be prevented due to the righteousness of the few.

But when they get to Sodom the two emissary-angels do not find even 10 righteous. Abraham’s nephew Lot, who lives in Sodom, offers exemplary hospitality to the two “men.” But late at night “the men of the city” surround and attack Lot’s house en masse. They want to “know” the visitors whom Lot is sheltering. Lot refuses, leaving the safety of his house to beg the crowd to relent, and even offering his virgin daughters to appease the crowd. But the men refuse, saying, “Stand back! This fellow came here as an alien, and he would play the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them” (Gen. 19:9). Their attack is repelled only with miraculous angelic help. Sodom and Gomorrah are incinerated the next day, after Lot’s family is led away by the angels to safety.

It was once common to interpret this story as a clear indictment on “homosexuality.” Fatefully, of course, the term “sodomy” comes from this story (a term introduced in the 11th century, according to Mark Jordan). The cultural impact of both the story and the term have been enormous. But now few serious biblical interpreters think this story is about “homosexuality” at all. It has certainly receded in the traditionalist argument.

We know before chapter 19 starts that Sodom and Gomorrah are legendarily sinful towns, though we don’t know why. But after the harrowing attack on Lot and his visitors the reader now knows quite a bit about the nature of that sinfulness. This is a horrifying tale about the attempted gang rape of strangers, the shocking violation of Israelite and ancient Near Eastern standards of hospitality, Lot’s willingness to sacrifice his own daughters to the crowd, and the depravity of an entire city — all exacerbated by the fact that the intended targets happen to be angelic emissaries of a holy God. The story is filled with violence and the threat of harm. Notice that when Lot protects his guests, his “brothers” expand their threat to Lot himself: “We will deal worse with you than with them.” The parallel story in Judges makes absolutely clear that it was violence the men wanted, including sexual violence, and violence they inflicted (cf. Judg. 20:5).

Sodom and Gomorrah, their sin and God’s punishment, became resonant symbols. When cited within the rest of Scripture, even the names of these towns become a byword for total human evil and devastating divine judgment (Dt. 29:23, 32:32; Isa. 1:9f., 3:9, 13:19; Jer. 23:14, 49:18, 50:40; Lam 4:6; Ezek. 16:46-50; Amos 4:11; Zeph. 2:9; Mt. 10:15/Lk 10:10-12, Rom. 9:29, 2 Peter 2:6-10, Jude 6-7; cf. Ps. 11:6). The starkest way to warn Israel or the Church of impending judgment was to drop in a Sodom reference. But never once in these intra-biblical Sodom references is their evil described as same-sex interest or behavior. In Isaiah 1:9-23 a host of sins are named but mainly related to abuses of public justice. In Jeremiah 23:14 it’s adultery, lying and unwillingness to repent. Ezekiel 16:49 describes their sins as pride, excess food, prosperous ease and lack of care for the poor. In Amos and Zephaniah the issues are pride, mocking and oppressing the poor. Intertestamental works Sirach (16:8), 3 Maccabees (2:5) and Wisdom (19:15) still talk about Sodom and Gomorrah, and still don’t connect their sin to sexuality at all.

The only biblical references to Sodom with any possible suggestion of same-sex behavior are Jude 6-8 and the parallel text in 2 Peter 2:6-7, with their references to unholy interest in “other flesh” (Jude 7). In the context of an interpretation of Genesis 19 that was already convinced the story is about same-sex behavior, these two late New Testament texts were read as confirmation. But look closely. They represent fragments of tradition referring to unholy human interest in sex with angels, a theme derived from the book of Enoch, with reference back to the mysterious Genesis 6 story about the Nephilim.

The most illuminating comparison to the Sodom and Gomorrah story is to wartime or prison rape. Think about how one of the first images that comes to mind when thinking about prisons is the fear of getting raped there.

The men of Sodom want gang rape. They are more interested in men than in Lot’s daughters because (as Matthew Vines has pointed out) in a patriarchal society men held greater honor, and thus their violation was viewed as a greater offense than violating a woman. I would also suggest that the men wanted to dominate, humiliate and harm the male visitors precisely by treating them like defenseless women. In sexist social systems, the most outrageous thing you can do to a man is to treat him like a woman. The Sodom story is about the attempted gang rape of men, because they are strangers, because they are vulnerable and because they are a juicy target for humiliation and violation. It is about a town that had sunk to the level of the most depraved battlefield or prison.

Genesis 19 and Judges 19 are narratives with huge implications for the ethics of war, prison, gender, violence and rape. But they have nothing to do with the morality of loving, covenantal same-sex relationships.

]]>David GusheeDavid Gushee on Faith, Politics & CultureTue, 02 Sep 2014 12:48:34 -0400Former youth pastor charged with abusehttp://baptistnews.com/culture/social-issues/item/29114-former-youth-pastor-charged-with-abuse
http://baptistnews.com/culture/social-issues/item/29114-former-youth-pastor-charged-with-abuseIn less than a year, a second Southern Baptist church in Muscle Shoals, Ala., is dealing with allegations of child sex abuse by a former minister.

By Bob Allen

A Southern Baptist church in Alabama pledged to cooperate with police following the arrest of a former youth minister charged with sexually abusing a girl younger than 16 and urged anyone with knowledge about the case to come forward.

Woodward Avenue Baptist Church in Muscle Shoals, Ala., posted a statement on the church website Aug. 21 saying the congregation is “deeply saddened” by news of Wednesday’s arrest of Charles Kyle Adcock, 31, the church’s former student pastor and interim worship pastor, on 22 counts of second-degree rape and nine counts of second-degree sodomy.

According to local media, Adcock, who goes by the first name of Kyle, was arrested in the Dallas-Fort Worth area on a warrant issued out of Alabama. He is under arrest at the Frisco City Jail with a $500,000 bond and awaiting extradition to face charges after a girl told police that Adcock sexually abused her between 2010 and 2012, beginning when she was 14. Police said the alleged abuse happened both at the church and at Adcock’s residence in Muscle Shoals.

According to Internet archives, Adcock, a graduate of Dallas Baptist University, became involved in student ministry in 2002 and joined the staff at Woodward Avenue Baptist Church in 2008. He worked as a financial adviser in Little Rock, Ark., beginning in October 2012 and recently moved to another firm in Frisco, Texas.

Woodward Avenue Baptist Church leaders initially declined to comment, beyond saying that no current employees worked there when Adcock was youth minister. On Aug. 21 the church released the following statement:

“The congregation of Woodward Avenue Baptist Church is deeply saddened by the news that unfolded yesterday regarding a former staff member. Our first priority is to offer prayer for the victim and her family. We are willing to work with law enforcement agencies in any way necessary to help in their investigation and would encourage anyone with information about the case to contact law enforcement. Woodward Avenue Baptist Church is committed to having a positive influence in the Shoals and beyond.”

Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, outreach director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, urged Baptist church officials to publicly share what they know about Adcock and when they knew it, and applauded the bravery of the victim who reported the alleged abuse.

“It is through the brave actions of victims that dangerous predators are kept away from children,” Dorris said. “We hope his arrest will give courage to anyone who may have seen, suspects, or suffered sexual abuse to call authorities."

A deacon told Huntsville television station WAFF 48 that Woodward Avenue Baptist Church recently tightened up its child-protection polices in response to another child sex abuse case at a church in the same community.

In February, police arrested Jeff Eddie, longtime pastor for children and church administration at Highland Park Baptist Church in Muscle Shoals, on 31 counts of second-degree sodomy, three counts of sexual abuse of a child under 12 and two counts of possession of child pornography. Eddie pleaded guilty March 7 and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

During questioning, Eddie reportedly told police that he had sexually abused so many children over the years that he couldn’t remember the number. In July an anonymous male who claims he was victimized by Eddie filed a lawsuit against both his alleged perpetrator and the church that hired him.

Citing local church autonomy, the Southern Baptist Convention does not provide any denomination-wide safeguards to detect and defrock clergy predators but encourages local congregations to perform background checks and contact former employers before hiring new ministers.

]]>In less than a year, a second Southern Baptist church in Muscle Shoals, Ala., is dealing with allegations of child sex abuse by a former minister.

By Bob Allen

A Southern Baptist church in Alabama pledged to cooperate with police following the arrest of a former youth minister charged with sexually abusing a girl younger than 16 and urged anyone with knowledge about the case to come forward.

Woodward Avenue Baptist Church in Muscle Shoals, Ala., posted a statement on the church website Aug. 21 saying the congregation is “deeply saddened” by news of Wednesday’s arrest of Charles Kyle Adcock, 31, the church’s former student pastor and interim worship pastor, on 22 counts of second-degree rape and nine counts of second-degree sodomy.

According to local media, Adcock, who goes by the first name of Kyle, was arrested in the Dallas-Fort Worth area on a warrant issued out of Alabama. He is under arrest at the Frisco City Jail with a $500,000 bond and awaiting extradition to face charges after a girl told police that Adcock sexually abused her between 2010 and 2012, beginning when she was 14. Police said the alleged abuse happened both at the church and at Adcock’s residence in Muscle Shoals.

According to Internet archives, Adcock, a graduate of Dallas Baptist University, became involved in student ministry in 2002 and joined the staff at Woodward Avenue Baptist Church in 2008. He worked as a financial adviser in Little Rock, Ark., beginning in October 2012 and recently moved to another firm in Frisco, Texas.

Woodward Avenue Baptist Church leaders initially declined to comment, beyond saying that no current employees worked there when Adcock was youth minister. On Aug. 21 the church released the following statement:

“The congregation of Woodward Avenue Baptist Church is deeply saddened by the news that unfolded yesterday regarding a former staff member. Our first priority is to offer prayer for the victim and her family. We are willing to work with law enforcement agencies in any way necessary to help in their investigation and would encourage anyone with information about the case to contact law enforcement. Woodward Avenue Baptist Church is committed to having a positive influence in the Shoals and beyond.”

Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, outreach director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, urged Baptist church officials to publicly share what they know about Adcock and when they knew it, and applauded the bravery of the victim who reported the alleged abuse.

“It is through the brave actions of victims that dangerous predators are kept away from children,” Dorris said. “We hope his arrest will give courage to anyone who may have seen, suspects, or suffered sexual abuse to call authorities."

A deacon told Huntsville television station WAFF 48 that Woodward Avenue Baptist Church recently tightened up its child-protection polices in response to another child sex abuse case at a church in the same community.

In February, police arrested Jeff Eddie, longtime pastor for children and church administration at Highland Park Baptist Church in Muscle Shoals, on 31 counts of second-degree sodomy, three counts of sexual abuse of a child under 12 and two counts of possession of child pornography. Eddie pleaded guilty March 7 and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

During questioning, Eddie reportedly told police that he had sexually abused so many children over the years that he couldn’t remember the number. In July an anonymous male who claims he was victimized by Eddie filed a lawsuit against both his alleged perpetrator and the church that hired him.

Citing local church autonomy, the Southern Baptist Convention does not provide any denomination-wide safeguards to detect and defrock clergy predators but encourages local congregations to perform background checks and contact former employers before hiring new ministers.

]]>Bob AllenSocial IssuesThu, 21 Aug 2014 11:27:31 -0400Evangelical child molester sentenced to 40 yearshttp://baptistnews.com/culture/social-issues/item/29082-evangelical-child-molester-sentenced-to-40-years
http://baptistnews.com/culture/social-issues/item/29082-evangelical-child-molester-sentenced-to-40-yearsNathaniel Morales was convicted in May of five counts of sex crimes committed in the 1980s and early 1990s at a prominent Washington-area evangelical church.

By Bob Allen

A former youth worker convicted of sexually abusing boys in the 1980s at a Sovereign Grace Ministries church in Maryland was sentenced Aug. 14 to 40 years in prison.

Nathaniel Morales, 56, was found guilty in May of abusing three boys from 1983 to 1991 while working in youth ministries and leading Bible studies at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Md.

Morales, who now lives in Las Vegas, Nev., is also named in a class-action lawsuit of numerous acts to conceal child sexual abuse by leaders at the church and SGM, a Calvinist church-planting network now based in Louisville, Ky. That case has been thrown out under a statute of limitations but is under appeal.

The case, described in media as the largest evangelical abuse scandal to date, drew attention in Southern Baptist circles because of close ties between C.J. Mahaney, founder and former head of Sovereign Grace Ministries, and denominational leaders including Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and prominent Washington pastor Mark Dever.

Leaders of Covenant Life initially said they had no knowledge of any abuse until many years after it occurred when an adult who had been victimized as a child came forward. During the Morales trial, however, Grant Layman, Mahaney’s brother-in-law and a former pastor at the church, testified that he knew of allegations against Morales 20 years ago but did not call police.

]]>Nathaniel Morales was convicted in May of five counts of sex crimes committed in the 1980s and early 1990s at a prominent Washington-area evangelical church.

By Bob Allen

A former youth worker convicted of sexually abusing boys in the 1980s at a Sovereign Grace Ministries church in Maryland was sentenced Aug. 14 to 40 years in prison.

Nathaniel Morales, 56, was found guilty in May of abusing three boys from 1983 to 1991 while working in youth ministries and leading Bible studies at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Md.

Morales, who now lives in Las Vegas, Nev., is also named in a class-action lawsuit of numerous acts to conceal child sexual abuse by leaders at the church and SGM, a Calvinist church-planting network now based in Louisville, Ky. That case has been thrown out under a statute of limitations but is under appeal.

The case, described in media as the largest evangelical abuse scandal to date, drew attention in Southern Baptist circles because of close ties between C.J. Mahaney, founder and former head of Sovereign Grace Ministries, and denominational leaders including Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and prominent Washington pastor Mark Dever.

Leaders of Covenant Life initially said they had no knowledge of any abuse until many years after it occurred when an adult who had been victimized as a child came forward. During the Morales trial, however, Grant Layman, Mahaney’s brother-in-law and a former pastor at the church, testified that he knew of allegations against Morales 20 years ago but did not call police.

]]>Bob AllenSocial IssuesThu, 14 Aug 2014 13:25:09 -0400Trial date set for accused molesterhttp://baptistnews.com/ministry/people/item/29027-trial-date-set-for-accused-molester
http://baptistnews.com/ministry/people/item/29027-trial-date-set-for-accused-molesterMore than a year after his arrest on charges of taking indecent liberties with boys, a former Baptist church camp chaperone is getting his day in court.

By Bob Allen

A trial date has been set in the case of a North Carolina man charged with taking indecent liberties with four boys while acting as chaperone of a group attending a Baptist church camp.

Clyde Wesley Way of Albemarle, N.C., will stand trial Sept. 22 in Brunswick County Superior Court on four counts of taking indecent liberties with a child and four counts of indecent exposure, according to local media.

Way, 69, was indicted in January for allegedly exposing himself to four boys, ages 10 to 13, while playing strip poker during a church retreat at the North Carolina Baptist Assembly at Fort Caswell the week of June 24-29, 2013.

Prior to his arrest, Way worked several years as volunteer student ministries team leader for the Stanly Baptist Association. Associational leaders removed him after four boys told their parents what happened at summer camp.

Way was arrested on July 10, 2013, but released from jail two weeks later after a judge reduced his bond from $350,000 to $20,000.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Way worked with youth at Baptist churches in Maryland.

]]>More than a year after his arrest on charges of taking indecent liberties with boys, a former Baptist church camp chaperone is getting his day in court.

By Bob Allen

A trial date has been set in the case of a North Carolina man charged with taking indecent liberties with four boys while acting as chaperone of a group attending a Baptist church camp.

Clyde Wesley Way of Albemarle, N.C., will stand trial Sept. 22 in Brunswick County Superior Court on four counts of taking indecent liberties with a child and four counts of indecent exposure, according to local media.

Way, 69, was indicted in January for allegedly exposing himself to four boys, ages 10 to 13, while playing strip poker during a church retreat at the North Carolina Baptist Assembly at Fort Caswell the week of June 24-29, 2013.

Prior to his arrest, Way worked several years as volunteer student ministries team leader for the Stanly Baptist Association. Associational leaders removed him after four boys told their parents what happened at summer camp.

Way was arrested on July 10, 2013, but released from jail two weeks later after a judge reduced his bond from $350,000 to $20,000.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Way worked with youth at Baptist churches in Maryland.